Its goal is to develop a better understanding of notable individuals by applying psychological theories to their biographies to further explain the motives behind some of the subjects actions and decisions.
Popular subjects of psychobiographies include figures such as Adolf Hitler, Vincent van Gogh, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Saddam Hussein.
One of the first great examples of this field's utility was Dr. Henry Murray's report on the analysis of Adolf Hitler's personality during the end of World War II.
[3] Persons who have been the subject of psychobiographical research include Freud, Adolf Hitler,[4] Sylvia Plath, Carl Jung, Vincent van Gogh, Martin Luther,[5] Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche,[6] Andrew Jackson, and Richard Nixon.
[14] Between 1920 and 1926, psychobiographies of Margaret Fuller (Anthony, 1920), Samuel Adams (Harlow, 1923), Edgar Allan Poe (Krutch, 1926), and Abraham Lincoln (Clark, 1923) were published by authors from a psychoanalytic perspective without a background in psychoanalysis.
[15] Some psychobiographies at this time were also written about groups of people, focusing on an aspect they had in common such as American presidents, philosophers, utopians, revolutionary leaders, and personality theorists.
Apart from psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who wrote the first psychobiographies, there have been historians, political scientists, personality psychologists, literary critics, sociologists, and anthropologists that have contributed to the growth of the field.
Freud's knowledge of the importance of frequency is shown in the analysis of dreams, slips, errors, and humor by recognizing that repetition leads people to disregard these behaviors or stimuli.