Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance of Biography and Psychology

Psychobiography is often attacked by critics who feel that it trivialises complex adult personalities, `explaining the large deeds of great individuals,' as George Will wrote, `by some slight the individual suffered at a tender age - say, 7, when his mother took away a lollipop.' Yet, as Alan Elms argues in Uncovering Lives, in the hands of a skilled practictioner, psychobiography can rival the very best traditional biography in the insights it offers. In presenting his case Elms offers his own vivid psychological portraits of prominent personality theorists (Freud, Jung, Allport, Skinner), imaginative writers (including Isaac Asimov, Jack Williamson, L. Frank Baum, and Vladimir Nabokov), and political figures (such as George Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Saddam Hussein).