February 15, 2007

One of the things on my mind during these last few weeks is the similarity between the work of a psychotherapist and that of a biographer. I mentioned it on my blog (February 10th), but for those of you who might not have seen it, I paraphrase:

…not only the reconstruction of a life, but also the nature of the relationship between biographer and subjects/sources and the complexities of transference and counter-transference. While in NY earlier this month I was discussing biography with an psychoanalyst friend and she said “hmmm, that’s a lot like the work that I do.” Then a few nights ago I had a conversation with a writer friend who is also a therapist and he agreed that there were similarities between the work of therapist and biographer. Okay, this is not a giant revelation; apparently it was not even a new thought to me, but one that had slipped my mind. So, just to be sure I was paying attention, the universe sent me another reminder message yesterday. While reviewing my note files, I came across an excerpted quote taken from an August 2000 newspaper article, “Writing from the Heart but Drawing on the Mind,” about novelist Amy Bloom. She said, “Some of the traits that led me to be a psychotherapist are the ones I find in myself as a writer. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to people, and I’m endlessly intrigued by relationships, particularly the gap between what people say and what they truly feel, and the gap between what they do and what they really want.” One might be able to ignore a one-two punch, but this thought has now come up three times in ten days, so I had best pay attention.

I am paying attention now.

Cursory research confirms that much has been written about the subject by biographers, historians, and psychoanalysts, among others. I have requested copies of two articles that ran in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association – one titled “Psychoanalysis and Historical Biography” and the other a review of a book titled “Introspection in Biography.” I also found reference to two issues of American Imago, both devoted to the subject of “transferences underlying biographical creation.” AI, a quarterly journal from Johns Hopkins University Press “publishes innovative articles on the history and theory of psychoanalysis as well as on the reciprocal relations between psychoanalysis and the broad range of disciplines that constitute the human sciences.” I’m betting there will be some useful thoughts inside those pages and was relieved to find that my local library has the publication in their reference section.

The pairing of psychoanalysis and biography is so natural that many an analyst has become a biographer. Here is an excerpt from the Preface of a biography by historian and psychoanalyst Charles B. Strozier, “Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst” in which he cites psychoanalysis as being the chief turning point in how writers approach to biography.

…Nothing has changed biography in the past century more than psychoanalysis itself. Until Freud it dealt mostly with great men in public life and, as Steven Marcus has put it, was intended to be “exemplary, monumental, inspirational, elevating, and instructive.” A biography had to be highly selective, emphasizing the public side of a figures life and the story of his virtues — there were few women — in order to accomplish its appointed tasks. Since Freud (and Erik Erikson’s models), on the other hand, biography has sought to discover, illuminate, and disclose. It is both broader and deeper. It looks into early experience and is concerned as much with quirks and neuroses as with achievements. The point is to find the true self. There is no theoretical or moral limit in determining relevance, and as Marcus adds, “no secret embarrassment, no shameful memory or episode” is ruled out, as long as it is “pertinent to the central project of understanding how a significant life came about.” The larger, more visible story of the life in politics, science, or art remains the central task to explain. But the imperative of psychoanalysis forces the biographer to include the public and the private, the work and the life. It can be a daunting task and requires its own form of careful selection. The best one can do, along with Lytton Strachey, is to row out into the vast sea of facts and drop a bucket or two…

I rather expect the journal readings will be laden with psychiatric jargon, and possibly of limited interest, but if I find even one or two thoughts worth exploring in my own work it will be worth it.
For the moment, I will close with a quote from another book written by a psychoanalyst (“Inner Roadblocks” by Jane S. Hall) in which she writes:

Empathy, responsibility, and genuine, benevolent curiosity are important conscious attitudes but the therapist needs access too to her unconscious ones, to her own anxieties, prejudices, and predilections.

Those words seem to me to be equally applicable to a biographer.