Psychobiography peer reviewed articles

Like most applied psychologists of my generation (born ; graduate school, ), I was trained exclusively in quantitative research methods. The topic of psychological history was reserved for the required undergraduate and graduate courses in history and systems of psychology; and psychobiography, though we did not use that term back then, was covered briefly by reading Freud’s () psychoanalytic study of Leonardo da Vinci, or Erikson’s () study of Mahatma Gandhi, in a personality psychology course.

The thought of pursuing historical, case study, or narrative research in doctoral study was not even presented as an option. The pioneering work on life story analysis and intensive case study methods conducted at Harvard University during the mids by Gordon Allport in The Use of Personal Documents in Psychological Science () and Henry Murray in Explorations in Personality () did not filter down into Counseling and Clinical P