psychography

biography

Written by

The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last updated

July 16, 2026

Quick Summary

Psychography refers to the description of an individual's mental characteristics and their development, essentially a psychological biography. It can also involve automatic writing for spiritualistic purposes or the production of spirit images without a camera, believed to be accomplished through spiritualistic forces.1

Biography, on the other hand, is a literary genre that recounts the life of an individual, drawing on historical evidence, memory, and various forms of material to recreate a life story. Psychobiography is a specific type of biography written from a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic perspective. Psychographics, a related term, is used in market research to classify population groups based on psychological variables like attitudes and values.234

Summary created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

6 Britannica Sources

Ask Britannica AI about this topic

Britannica doesn't have a full article on this topic, so we've curated a list of our relevant coverage.

Gamaliel Bradford
…a biographer who cultivated “psychography,” a new type of biographical writing that sought to portray the inner life of the subject by a skillful selection of important and interesting traits. Lee the American (1912) was the first of a series of successful “psychographs,” which included Portraits of Women (1916)…
Read More
…a biographer who cultivated “psychography,” a new type of biographical writing that sought to portray the inner life of the subject by a skillful selection of important and interesting traits. Lee the American (1912) was the first of a series of successful “psychographs,” which included Portraits of Women (1916)…
Read More