Biographies are at their best when they convey that the subject is a three-dimensional human being who possesses an inner life. Psychobiography: In Search of the Inner Life offers tools for using psychological approaches when writing biography.. A leader in the field, James William Anderson, analyzes the effective use of psychology and what can go wrong, such as treating the biographical subject reductively, and failing to account for both historical and cultural context. Anderson recommends using psychology to open up, not close down; to provide new questions, not easy answers; to complicate, not simplify.

His lively inquiry into the art of biography--with its vignettes about people such as Oprah Winfrey, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Henry James, Simone de Beauvoir, Edith Wharton, and Anaïs Nin--will appeal to all readers who are curious about the lives of fascinating personages.

James William Anderson is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University. There he teaches courses on Personality Psychology and the Psychology of Film. He also serves on the faculty of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. He received degrees from Princeton University, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago. For several decades, as a licensed clinical psychologist, he has conducted psychotherapy. In his research, he focuses on psychobiography and has published pieces on William and Henry James, Abraham Lincoln, Edith Wharton, Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, D. W. Winnicott, Woodrow Wilson, and Frank Lloyd Wright.