Most of the essays offered here are revised versions of papers first prepared for an invitational conference on "The Psychology of Biography," held in Chapel Hill, November 12-14, 1981. The conference, which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, brought together twelve biographers—including historians, literary scholars, political scientists, and psychoanalysts—each of whom had composed an introspective essay describing his experience of the biographical process. Each participant was invited to proceed in whatever manner seemed appropriate to him, but all were encouraged as well to address a number of questions that we regard as central to this inquiry: Why did I decide to write a biography, and how did I select a subject? How did I achieve insight into the internal life of my protagonist? In what ways did I put my personal stamp on the portrait I produced? As a result of protracted involvement with the subject, did the latter influence my life, and, if so, how? The contributors have responded to these questions in varying degrees, but they provide evidence enough to permit, for the first time, some systematic treatment of these and subsidiary questions. On the other hand, each paper is marked by an individual approach and style. Taken as a whole, these uncommonly intimate and self-revealing essays illuminate many aspects of the biographical enterprise. The collaborative character of the symposium deserves emphasis. It began with the request that the contributors-to-be all address a number of specific questions. It continued with the cooperation of a majority of the contributors with a psychoanalyst or clinical psychologist, as an aspect of the preparation of their papers. (More on this in a moment.) It went a step further at the conference itself, which served as a forum for an exchange of views so stimulating that it prompted the participants to undertake to revise their papers. Moreover, the conferees were so impressed by the frequent flashes of illumination, most often touched off by Dr. George Moraitis, that they asked him to compose an additional essay (an afterword) for this volume, to bring to a wider public the workings, pitfalls, and potentialities of the collaborative method.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The topic of introspection stands at the interface between questions in epistemology about the nature of self-knowledge and questions in the philosophy of mind about the nature of consciousness. What is the nature of introspection such that it provides us with a distinctive way of knowing about our own conscious mental states? And what is the nature of consciousness such that we can know about our own conscious mental states by introspection? How should we understand the relationship between consciousness and introspective self-knowledge? Should we explain consciousness in terms of introspective self-knowledge or vice versa? Until recently, questions in epistemology and the philosophy of mind were pursued largely in isolation from one another. This volume aims to integrate these two lines of research by bringing together fourteen new essays and one reprinted essay on the relationship between introspection, self-knowledge, and consciousness.