Psycho-Biography Tradition in the History of Psychology of Religion

Yıl 2019, Cilt: 2019 Sayı: 40, 7 - 35, 31.12.2019

Faruk Karaca

https://doi.org/10.28949/bilimname.572714

Cited By: 1

Öz

Although psychobiography has a history of nearly a century, it has received increasing attention, especially in the last quarter century. Psychobiography is a personality analysis based on real data about the individual rather than a simple biography. In psycho-biographies, whether it is a historical personality or a living person, it is aimed to re-construct his personality based on the works he produces as much as his biographical data and to reinterpret his works by making use of this construction. By analyzing the layers of form, event and meaning used by going through the works of the person whose psychobiography is written, their conscious and unconscious motivations and defense mechanisms are analyzed through psychological and psychoanalytic concepts. Although the pioneers of psychobiography, which is a personality analysis based on real data about the individual rather than a simple biography, are psychoanalysts, psychoanalysis is not the only psychological approach applied during the process of making psychoanalysis, other psychological approaches have also been adopted.
Individuals subject to psychobiography are generally personalities that have come to the forefront with various characteristics and have become historical. Rather, psycho-biographies of such people are written because they are role models to society in various ways, in addition to other people's desire to know and understand them better. Psycho-biographical studies, which began to appear in the years when the psychology of religion appeared on the stage of history, could not continue at the same speed and experienced a period of convalescence for a long time.
Although psycho-biographies are partly novel, they are written by experts in accordance with psychological perspectives and facts. The main difference of the psychobiographer from the novelist is the obligation to adhere to scientific facts and the life of the person he is dealing with. In this aspect, psychobiography is a science in one aspect and an art in another. For the psychobiographer, who aims to make the spiritual analysis of the personality under consideration, the products of the individual are as important as their lives. Even analyzing personality based on work is the most commonly used method in psycho-biographies. If the subject is a historical personality, psychobiography analyzes the individual's historical actions, his rights and wrongs. If the individual whose psychobiography is written is an artist, rather than the right and wrong actions that shape history, the artist's art products (poet’s poetry, painter's painting) come to the fore.
There are several difficulties in writing psychobiography. The first one is the source problem when writing about historical personalities. The inability to access sufficient sources or being sentenced to second-hand sources inevitably causes the author to move away from the facts. Because, although the sources of historical personalities are the works of the individual, not being able to access some of these works makes it obligatory to use the opinions of those who have knowledge about the subject and to appeal to other works on the person concerned. This condemns psychobiography to second-hand sources and paves the way for reductionist interpretations.
A second step that the psychobiographer should take is to develop empathy to protect the person from an unconscious trivialization. Building an empathic relationship with the person helps the biographer to give ear to the source through the model of the related person's personality. By constantly avoiding dogmatic personality theories, the constant shifts between hypotheses and knowledge gradually pave the way for a person's portrait to emerge. However, even if he uses this approach, no biographer can claim that he has done exactly the right description of the person he is working with. Because psychological interpretations never carry certainty. In other words, psycho-biographies, which are journeys to the inner self of the individual, are written by using various psychological theories.
The first of these theories is psychoanalytic theory. Because biographers often encounter problems about these individuals that cannot be explained without resorting to psychodynamic analysis, such as mismatches in their behavior. On this basis, the pioneer of psycho-biographical studies was Freud, the founder of the psychodynamic approach. However, psycho-biographies are not only studies from a psychodynamic perspective. The second theoretical approach proposed in this regard is the psychological approach that asserts that ideas about character types are not fixed. Because the concept of character is related to an individual who develops relatively static and systematically arranged thinking, feeling and behavior. A psychobiographer, then, is the one who is confronted with recreating the character of that person without forgetting that the character is extremely complex. Psychobiographers should be able to access other sources of information other than individuals. He should learn how these sources of information describe situations in which a person plays a role and provide information about the individual's personality. In addition, psychobiographers should be able to examine the whole life of the person to the extent possible and evaluate the events in light of the final effects of their behavior.
W. James (1902, 2017), the founder of the psychology of religion, has stated that it is not worthwhile to search for people who have acquired their fixed forms by imitating them through religious tradition and having a religious life at the habitual level; instead, the psychologists of religion should seek for the original experiences that serve as models for the emotions and imitation behaviors that are instilled in them. According to James, these experiences can be found in individuals having a religious life in extreme excitement, and such personalities are “genius” in the religious field, likewise many other geniuses who perform effective actions worth mentioning in the biography pages. They have always been beings with high emotional sensitivity, and often have a dissonant inner life having been dragged into melancholia during a part of their journey. With James' encouragement, individuals considered to have a high level of personal experience have been an important research topic in the early years of the psychology of religion as an academic discipline. In this article, the evolution of psycho-biographical movement that emerged in the history of psychology of religion in the world and in our country is discussed with some evaluations.

Din Psikolojisi Tarihinde Psiko-Biyografi Geleneği

Öz

Psiko-biyografi yaklaşık bir asırlık bir geçmişe sahip olmasına rağmen, özellikle son çeyrek asırda gittikçe artan bir ilgi görmektedir. Psiko-biyografi, basit bir biyografiden ziyade, bireyle ilgili gerçek verilerden yola çıkılarak gerçekleştirilen bir kişilik analizidir. Psiko-biyografilerde, ister tarihsel bir kişilik isterse yaşayan biri olsun, biyografik verileri kadar ürettiği yapıtlardan yola çıkarak kişiliğinin yeniden kurgulanması ve yine bu kurgudan yararlanılarak eserlerinin tekrar yorumlanması hedeflenir. Psiko-biyografisi yazılan şahsiyetin yapıtları üzerinden gidilerek kullanılan biçim, olay ve anlam katlarının çözümlenmesiyle, bilinçli ve bilinç dışı motivasyonları ile savunma mekanizmaları psikolojik ve psikanalitik kavramlarla analiz edilir. Basit bir biyografiden ziyade, bireyle ilgili gerçek verilerden yola çıkılarak gerçekleştirilen bir kişilik analizi olan psiko-biyografinin öncüleri psikanalistler olsa da, psiko-biyografi yazımında başvurulan tek psikolojik yaklaşım psikanaliz olmayıp, diğer psikolojik yaklaşımlara da müracaat edilmektedir. Psiko-biyografiye konu olan bireyler genellikle çeşitli özellikleriyle ön plana çıkmış ve tarihe mal olmuş kişiliklerdir. Daha çok bu tür insanların psiko-biyografilerinin yazılma nedeni, diğer insanların onları daha iyi tanıma ve anlama isteğinin yanında, çeşitli açılardan topluma rol model olma durumlarıdır. Din psikolojisinin tarih sahnesine çıktığı yıllarda belirmeye başlayan psiko-biyografik çalışmalar aynı hızla devam edememiş, uzunca bir süre bir nekahat dönemi yaşanmıştır. Makalede din psikolojisi tarihinde ortaya çıkan psiko-biyografik hareketin dünyada ve ülkemizde geçirmiş olduğu evrim bazı değerlendirmelerle birlikte ele alınmıştır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

psychology of religion, psycho-history, psycho-biography, psychoanalysi

Kaynakça

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