ABSTRACT
THE MORE ONE EXAMINES the relationship between psychoanalysis and biography, the greater the complexities appear. A premise with which to start an examination is that before Sigmund Freud, biographies were written without the benefit (or burden) of the discoveries of psychoanalysis, but that after these discoveries biographers’ views of their subjects have been enriched (or contaminated) by explicit information (or misinformation) about the realm of “unconscious” motivation. As I hope to show, even this “obvious” premise requires considerable qualification—although I believe it to be more true than false.
