Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Examining Lives: Self-Reflections in Psychobiography contains psychobiographical studies of people of achievement whose lives impact their works. Those examined are filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock; musicians Glenn Gould and Elvis Presley; authors Flannery O’Connor and C. S. Lewis; political activist Emma Goldman; and artists Mark Rothko, Ferdinand Hodler, and Stephen De Staebler. The book is the product of a collection of scholars and clinicians from diverse fields, all of whom are members of the Bay Area Psychobiography Group, which has been active from 1992 to the present. Each chapter is “psychobiographical” in that it provides biography but also looks at the subject through a psychological lens. What makes this book stand apart is that the authors examine their relationships with the individuals they write about. In their self-reflections, they consider the challenges they faced when they were attracted to or repulsed by their subjects or realized the impact their subjects had on their own lives. The book’s nine chapters are organized thematically into three sections: Death and Dying; Identity and Family; and Self and Subject. Psychological topics include mourning, healing, perversion, immersion, rage, humor, and writing blocks. The book illustrates that psychobiography, indeed, all biography, consists of one human being engaging with another human being.</jats:p>