Page 317 - Contribution To Phenomenology

310 MANO DANIEL

a. for exculpation or hagiography
b. as a literary-aesthetic creation
c. as a means of studying culture
d. as a means of studying one aspect of development (topical)
e. as an adjunct to therapy:
changing person—e.g., psychiatry
changing environment—e.g., vocational guidance
f. as illustration of a specific problem or mode of therapy
g. as illustration of a theory, e.g., to exemplify a conceptual framework
h. as a means of gaining maximum understanding of the individuaF^

A few comments on the above list are in order. Some of these pur-
poses have been challenged, damned, declared otiose and rejected by
reader and practitioner (for example (a)) while others ((e) and (f)) have
been pursued vigorously by psychologists and psychoanalysis through
psychobiography. Moreover, the list is a reflection of Allport's psycho-
logical bent. Allport could have offered additional purposes for the prac-
tice: in particular, the use of biography as a cultural resource for
illuminating the historical context from and within which the individual
enacts her socio-pohtical role. Nevertheless, the list is useful since it
draws attention to the use of biography and the understanding of
individuals for the study of culture. Allport argued that the idiographic
study of an individual through personal documents would not only afford
an understanding of individual personahty, but provide the foundation
that would lead to discoveries of nomothetic generalizations about human
personality. Adherents of this nomothetic quest are also to be found in
sociology,^ and anthropology.^ What they share is a recognition of the
important role of the individual in her cultural situation as the basis upon
which the inquiry for nomothetic generalizations proceeds.
The foundational role of biography for historiography is advanced by
Wilhelm Dilthey, who argued that the process of writing a biography is
the pUnth upon which the human sciences should be modelled. He writes:

^^ John A. Garraty, "Gordon Allport's Rules for the Preparation of Life
Histories and Case Studies," Biography 4.4 (1982), 285.
^ Cf. Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Sciences,
edited by Daniel Bertaux (Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1981).
^ Cf. Langness, L. L. and Gelya Frank Lives: An Anthropological Approach
to Biography (Novato, C.A.: Chandler & Sharp, 1981).