Biographical method in psychology
In literary criticism, sociology and psychologyuse the biographical method of research, which allows you to study the work of art, the characteristics of social development, as well as the psychological development of the personality through a description of the biography of the writer, individual member of society, or a particular person.
In psychology this method is presented in threevariants. The first is the description and analysis of a person in retrospect, on the basis of already available documents and other sources. The second option is a long-term study, the collection of biographical data throughout life for their subsequent analysis. The third way is with the help of causometry, i.e. the establishment of connections between various events of life, indicated and estimated by the person in terms of their significance.
The traditional biographical method
As a rule, for description and researchpeople's life path is used by various documentary sources: letters, diaries, memoirs of contemporaries and their own, all that is preserved in time. But such data, as a rule, are incomplete, certain periods of life simply turn into "black holes" of biographies, and it becomes impossible to learn anything about them. Another problem in the study of post factum is the inaccuracy of certain facts, the subjectivity of their assessment, the inconsistency in describing the same events by different people.
For the researcher-psychologist it is important not onlyto receive reliable information about the biography, the external life of a person, the description of which he is engaged in, but, first and foremost, his inner emotional, emotional experiences associated with certain events, their significant evaluation. Unfortunately, documentary facts reflect a person's psychological state only partially, and sometimes they do not give such information at all.
Longitudinal biographical method in psychology
Another way to study a person's biographyis based on long-term observations of his life's path. This is a psychological experiment that lasts a lifetime. Similar studies deal with the direction in science, called "ontogenetic psychology", which is widely developed in America and Europe.
Longitudinal observations in the perspective of developmentpersonality, of course, are more complete and give the opportunity to select different objects and subjects for analysis. In addition, they allow us to use real measurements of various psychological parameters, rather than rely on documentary evidence. But the duration of time makes them blurred, and does not give a solid idea of the development of individuality. Another drawback of such studies is the proportionality of long-term observations conducted with the personality of the experimenter, which gives a very subjective assessment of life events.
The causal biographical method
This method was founded by AA.Kronik, who tried to model the life of a man with the help of special techniques, tracing the causal relationship of life events. The essence of the method lies in the fact that a person identifies the most significant events for him, which gives a certain positive or negative assessment, depending on their impact on life. Linking these values to the personality, character and temperament, as well as significant values, one can evaluate the past life and build the right perspectives in the future. This is the aim of the methods of causal analysis, which use different means to obtain experimental material: interviews, projective techniques, simulation of game situations.
The data obtained are subjective, but giventhe biographical method, unlike traditional ones, is more therapeutic and useful, since it allows a person to assess his own way of life, to structure it, which gives an opportunity for deeper analysis and evaluation.
