Evolving Conceptions of Psychobiography and the Study of Lives Encounters With Psychoanalysis, Personality Psychology, and Historical Science

19 H ow are we to conceptualize the evolving relations between the study of individual lives and the discipline of psychology? This question is more complex than it first appears. How to conceptualize the study of lives? How do we conceptualize the discipline of psychology? And how are we to conceptualize their evolving relationships? Much is at stake in the answer, with implications for what psychology might become. People bet their careers and their working lives on different answers to such questions. This chapter attempts to tell a different story about psychobiography and the study of lives in relation to the discipline of psychology. It is not a traditional " rise of natural science " story, in which case studies are seen as being replaced by more rigorous quantitative and experimental methods. It is, instead, a story which respects the virtues of historical, interpretive, and narrative methods, as well as of quantitative and experimental methods. Personal life histories are, I believe, involved in the creation and development of every tradition in psychology, including psychoanalysis, learning theory, behaviorism, humanist psychology , cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the study of lives. The development of the study of lives is examined in this chapter in relation to the lives and careers of a number of people active in the tradition, including also include elements of my personal experience interacting with supporters and opponents of the study of lives. These examples may resonate (or not) with readers reflecting on their own experiences encountering different " hard " or " soft " traditions in psychology over the years. We are all faced with competing conceptions of psychology, back through the history of the discipline. Is psychology about the study of sensation and perception? Reaction times? Memory? The structural elements of consciousness? The unconscious? Learning? Behavior? Social psychological processes? Personality? Developmental processes and change? Cognition? Psychopathol-ogy? Therapy and change? Neuroscience? And/ or is psychology about the study of persons and lives? Each of these conceptions has been proposed (and more). Consensus has been difficult to achieve (Sternberg, 2005). There were early conceptions of psychology, such as Wundt's physiological and experimental psychology (Wundt, 1873–1874), that focus on the experimental study of sensation and perception and reaction times, with little or no attention given to persons or lives. The history of experimental psychology (Boring, 1929/1950; Hearst, 1979) follows the application of experimental methods from sensation and perception, to memory, …