Brodie: it just dawned on me

[Archaea]

People like to read her, especially if you're cynical, because she was into English lit. That's all her masters was. Reading her bio, it shows she was an effective public speaker and wrote clearly.

What I don't like about her is her penchant for trying to be a historian, when she lacked any formal training and her penchant for psychobiography, which failed miserably in her Nixon effort, because she has no psychological nor psychiatric training. She doesn't exhibit any knowledge of any of the known schools of psychological training, be it Gestalt or cognitive behavorial.

Yet people like a good story, and she gave them a good story, irrespective of the facts, or critical reasoning.

Pyschobiographies should not be written by English lit people.

If Seattle writes a Roman history as a thriller, I'm dying to read it, due to his vast interest in it as a hobby. He demonstrates clear writing and thinking on matters for which he does not have an axe to grind. Nonetheless, I doubt he will try to give us psycho babble, because that's not his training, formally or informally. Nothing in Brodie demonstrates any training in an area where she pawns off her abilities. The psychobiography was just a genre that literary types accepted for a while.

I don't believe they are very acceptable in biographical or historical circles any longer.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Archaea

People like to read her, especially if you're cynical, because she was into English lit. That's all her masters was. Reading her bio, it shows she was an effective public speaker and wrote clearly.

What I don't like about her is her penchant for trying to be a historian, when she lacked any formal training and her penchant for psychobiography, which failed miserably in her Nixon effort, because she has no psychological nor psychiatric training. She doesn't exhibit any knowledge of any of the known schools of psychological training, be it Gestalt or cognitive behavorial.

Yet people like a good story, and she gave them a good story, irrespective of the facts, or critical reasoning.

Pyschobiographies should not be written by English lit people.

If Seattle writes a Roman history as a thriller, I'm dying to read it, due to his vast interest in it as a hobby. He demonstrates clear writing and thinking on matters for which he does not have an axe to grind. Nonetheless, I doubt he will try to give us psycho babble, because that's not his training, formally or informally. Nothing in Brodie demonstrates any training in an area where she pawns off her abilities. The psychobiography was just a genre that literary types accepted for a while.

I don't believe they are very acceptable in biographical or historical circles any longer.

It's not unusual for non-PhD's and for that matter non-academics to write influential histories and biographies. It happens all the time. Usually these are intended for a popular audience but some are groundbreaking and admired as classics. Barbara Tuchman is a classic example. Shelby Foote is another. Each wrote history books ranked as among the best non-fiction ever written.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_Foote

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

It's not unusual for non-PhD's and for that matter non-academics to write influential histories and biographies. It happens all the time. Usually these are intended for a popular audience but some are groundbreaking and admired as classics. Barbara Tuchman is a classic example. Shelby Foote is another. Each wrote history books ranked as among the best non-fiction ever written.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tuchman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_Foote

Your observations are correct, and my post was necessarily hyperbolic. My main objection to anybody writing psychological, is I hope they have clue as to the psychology of people. In my readings of Brodie, with Smith, Jefferson and only excerpts of Nixon, I found her psychobabble more cartoonish than real life.

I am currently reviewing aspects of psychology, in philosophical and clinical terms, discovering that our lay persons' understanding of the human mind is cartoonish. Thus, when a person makes no efforts to study in depth this field, our efforts to convey it in writing result an amateurish attempt to look into another's mind and cavern.