Less Is More but More Is Different: Distinction Between High Resolution and Low Resolution Psychobiography

Abstract

In this chapter I place the issue of psychobiography into a broad epistemological context. Mobilizing some principles of cognitive psychology, phenomenology and hermeneutics, I contemplate on the problem of cognizing and depicting the other person. I hope to provide psychobiographers with new methodological considerations, calling the attention to some underlying cognitive processes in forming an authentic picture of their subjects. Introducing the metaphor of digital image resolution, I make a distinction between high and low resolution biographies. In case of high resolution psychobiographies biographers rely mainly on the bottom-up constructive processes, ambitioning the highest “sustainable” level of detailedness to get to a preferably precise depiction of their subject. It is justifiable whenever a progress is in focus and when it holds the promise of a different outcome than the previous works. Low resolution psychobiography, on the other hand, is narrowed in terms of content and focus. Details are not relevant unless they serve the aim of outlining a meaningful picture. Biographers exploit the potentials of the underlying top-down cognitive processes to identify patterns in the individual’s life course, personality or oeuvre, which nobody did before. To the analogue of statistical hypothesis testing we can distinguish between type I and type II errors in the practice of psychobiographical interpretation. Type I error occurs when insufficiently cautious biographers “discover” patterns that do not exist. Type II error occurs when biographers fail to notice evidently present patterns. I conclude that the image resolution metaphor is helpful to make a reasonable distinction between the two types of psychobiographies (high and low resolution types). It is always the biographers’ competence to choose the appropriate level of resolution which best serves their aims.