While the study of psychology has offered little in the way of explaining the creative process, Koestler examines the idea that we are at our most creative when rational thought is suspended--for example, in dreams and trancelike states. All who read The Act of Creation will find it a compelling and illuminating book.

The Act of Creation

Despite impressive advances in recent years with respect to theory and research, personality psychology has yet to articulate clearly a comprehensive framework for understanding the whole person. In an effort to achieve that aim, the current article draws on the most promising empirical and theoretical trends in personality psychology today to articulate 5 big principles for an integrative science of the whole person. Personality is conceived as (a) an individual's unique variation on the general evolutionary design for human nature, expressed as a developing pattern of (b) dispositional traits, (c) characteristic adaptations, and (d) self-defining life narratives, complexly and differentially situated (e) in culture and social context. The 5 principles suggest a framework for integrating the Big Five model of personality traits with those self-defining features of psychological individuality constructed in response to situated social tasks and the human need to make meaning in culture.

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A new Big Five: fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality.

The American Psychological Association Publications and Communications Board Working Group on Journal Article Reporting Standards for Qualitative Research (JARS-Qual Working Group) was charged with examining the state of journal article reporting standards as they applied to qualitative research and with generating recommendations for standards that would be appropriate for a wide range of methods within the discipline of psychology. These standards describe what should be included in a research report to enable and facilitate the review process. This publication marks a historical moment-the first inclusion of qualitative research in APA Style, which is the basis of both the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) and APA Style CENTRAL, an online program to support APA Style. In addition to the general JARS-Qual guidelines, the Working Group has developed standards for both qualitative meta-analysis and mixed methods research. The reporting standards were developed for psychological qualitative research but may hold utility for a broad range of social sciences. They honor a range of qualitative traditions, methods, and reporting styles. The Working Group was composed of a group of researchers with backgrounds in varying methods, research topics, and approaches to inquiry. In this article, they present these standards and their rationale, and they detail the ways that the standards differ from the quantitative research reporting standards. They describe how the standards can be used by authors in the process of writing qualitative research for submission as well as by reviewers and editors in the process of reviewing research. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report.

This article presents a tripartite model of identity that integrates cognitive, social, and cultural levels of analysis in a multimethod framework. With a focus on content, structure, and process, identity is defined as ideology cognized through the individual engagement with discourse, made manifest in a personal narrative constructed and reconstructed across the life course, and scripted in and through social interaction and social practice. This approach to the study of identity challenges personality and social psychologists to consider a cultural psychology framework that focuses on the relationship between master narratives and personal narratives of identity, recognizes the value of a developmental perspective, and uses ethnographic and idiographic methods. Research in personality and social psychology that either explicitly or implicitly relies on the model is reviewed.

Narrative and the Cultural Psychology of Identity

Explorations in Personality. A Clinical and Experimental Study of Fifty Men of College Age, New York (Oxford University Press) 1938.

PART 1: HOW TO WRITE A PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY 1. Introducing psychobiography 2. Evolving conceptions of psychobiography and the study of lives: Encounters with psychoanalysis, personality psychology, and historical science 3. How to strike psychological paydirt in biographical data 4. What psychobiographers might learn from personality psychology 5. If the glove fits: The art of theoretical choice in psychobiography 6. How to critically evaluate alternative explanations of life events: The case of Van Gogh's ear 7. Divide and multiply: Comparative theory and methodology in multiple case psychobiology 8. Diane Arbus' photographic autobiography: Theory and method revisited PART 2: PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY OF ARTISTS 9. Nothing alive can be calculated: The psychobiographical study of artists 10. Twelve ways to say 'lonesome': Assessing error and control in the music of Elvis Presley 11. Mourning, melancholia, and Sylvia Plath 12. Margaret's smile 13. Edith Wharton and Ethan Frome: A psychobiographical exploration PART THREE: PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY OF PSYCHOLOGISTS 14. The psychobiographical study of psychologists 15. Freud as Leonardo: Why the first psychobiography went wrong 16. Four, two or one? Gordon Allport and the unique personality 17. Nietzsche's Madness 18. Erikson and psychobiography, psychobiography and Erikson 19. From the book of Mormon to the operational definition: The existential project of S.S. Stevens PART FOUR: PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY OF POLITICAL FIGURES 20. Alive and kicking: The problematics of political psychobiography 21. Osama Bin Laden: The sum of all fears 22. In his father's shadow: George W Bush and the politics of personal transformation 23. Hunting the Snark: Methodlogical Considerations in Studying Elusive Politicians 24. Psychobiography in context: Predicting the behaviour of tyrants

Handbook of psychobiography.

Psychobiography is best understood as a branch of applied personality science in which experimental findings are used to explore the lives and personalities of public figures, from artists to politicians. This article introduces the field, addresses questions commonly raised about it, and explores, among other subjects, what psychobiographical research might offer to the field of psychology. Two recent model psychobiographies are described in detail-McAdams's (2010) profile of George W. Bush and Kasser's (2013) analysis of John Lennon-both of which are oriented scientifically and rooted in experimentally derived concepts. Lastly, criteria for evaluating psychobiographical studies are summarized, as well as attributes of effective psychobiography that tend to include the components of fact, fit, and function. (PsycINFO Database Record

https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/72/5/434.pdf

Psychobiography: Theory and method.

Chapter 1 - Consistently Inconsistent Consistency Chapter 2 - A Snake's Nest of No's Chapter 3 - Leaving the Boy Behind? Chapter 4 - The Mind of a Murderer Chapter 5 - Frying Fancy Fish Chapter 6 - Preparations for the Scaffold of a Personality Portrait

William Todd Schultz

Papers

Handbook of psychobiography.

Psychobiography: Theory and method.

Tiny terror : why Truman Capote (almost) wrote Answered prayers

Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2001-2002

The Psychobiography of Genius