ABSTRACT
The psychoanalyst is bent upon a therapeutic result with his patient, upon a reawakening in the analytic situation of unresolved conflicts with a view to providing the patient an opportunity to achieve more satisfactory solutions than those he originally adopted. In order to achieve his objective of conveying some truth about the human being he is studying, the biographer, as the psychoanalyst, must have the capacity for both involvement with and detachment from his subject. The biographer is constantly re-examining and revising his earlier interpretations of his subject's behavior with improved hypotheses gained from his expanding familiarity with and understanding of the data. Analyst and biographer both must be able to participate without inhibition in the feelings of their subjects and this ability depends upon the range and quality of their emotional resonance as well as upon their rational equipment.
