Handbook of Psychobiography: Reviews

"Drawing on leading contributors to psychobiography, Professor Schultz has created a handbook that defines and advances the state of the art and applied science. It tells the reader how to do it, and maybe more important, how not to do it, and it illustrates psychobiography at its best, illuminating the lives of notable artists, psychologists, and political figures. It is a solid contribution to the idiographic and holistic study of personality. It would make an excellent text for advanced undergraduates or graduates. And, unusual for a handbook, it is just a very good read."

--M. Brewster Smith, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz

"This is a rewarding, definitive clearly written collection illustrating the application of psychological theory in understanding life-stories. The authors provide clear guidelines for writing about lives illustrated in a number of informative reports on writers, artists and politicians. This is a valuable, essential book for students and professionals alike interested in personality and biography."

--Bertram J. Cohler, William Rainey Harper Professor, The University of Chicago

"The Handbook of Psychobiography is a welcome addition to an increasing number of contributions that validates the claim that narrative should be taken as the root metaphor for psychology. It is only through narrative that contexts and frames for the life decisions made by subjects of biography or autobiography can be brought into the light for examination. The various chapters make use of narrative concepts to reveal lives as lived, a refreshing alternative to traditional personality studies that can only satisfy the researcher's appetite for large numbers of subjects, in the process sacrificing any claim to depth of understanding."

--Theodore R. Sarbin, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Criminology, University of California-Santa Cruz

"William Schultz's Handbook of Psychobiography is a very welcome contribution in many ways. Above all, it keeps alive the 'revolution'in understanding individual human lives that Gordon Allport, Henry Murray, and Erik Erikson launched, and it carries that 'revolution' into the post-September 11 era. Once could hardly ask for more."

--Lawrence J. Friedman, Visiting Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University

"An invaluable professional collection, bridging both art and science, that should do much to legitimize this whole tradition of thought that is so critical to the future of our intellectual life."

--Paul Roazen, Professor Emeritus of Social and Political Science, York University in Toronto and author of On the Freud Watch: Public Memoirs

"Disciplined psychobiographical studies are finding a place within the scientifically respectable main currents of personality psychology. This book, which brings together methodological and substantive contributions by the major scholars who do psychobiography studies, should set the standard for the field. In the first section, readers will find excellent advice on doing psychobiography—where to begin, mistakes to avoid, standards of evidence to seek. Later sections employ these methods to construct entertaining and illuminating psychologically-informed portraits of a wide variety of interesting people: from figures of high culture (Edith Wharton, Nietzsche) and pop culture (Elvis Presley) to leaders in the struggles that are defining the early years of the Twenty-First Century (George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden, as well as Kim Jung-Il, the elusive North Korean leader about whom so little is known). Fortified with the advice and examples from this Handbook, personality psychologists and others interested in deeper interpretations of significant contemporary and historical figures will be encouraged and emboldened."

--David Winter, Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan

"A prolific and respected psychologist, Schultz (Pacific Univ.) not only edited this volume but also contributed several chapters. The book certainly deserves the designation “handbook” because it not only provides sections on methodology and content but also blends the two to illustrate critical points about the field. The book opens with a section on psychobiographical methods: the chapters here include William McKinley Runyan’s discussion of psychobiography’s contact with psychoanalysis, personality psychology, and historical sciences; Dan McAdams’s treatment of personality psychology’s view of psychobiography; and Schultz’s discussion of methodology (distinguishing good and bad psychobiography). The remaining chapters are devoted to psychobiographies of artists (e.g., Elvis Presley, Diane Arbus), psychologists (William James, Freud, Erikson), and political leaders (George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden). This volume should see wide use. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals."

--W.A. Ashton, CUNY York College, Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries

Additional reviews will be added as they come in.