心理传记资料分析中的“凸显性指标”

“Indicators of Saliency” in the Analysis of Psychobiographical Data

如何从大量的传记资料中提炼出有用的资料是心理传记学研究的一个关键问题。为了有效解决这个问题,Irving Alexander提出"凸显性指标",认为,如果传记中涉及到如下内容,这些资料将可以作为重点分析的对象,这些内容包括:任何反复出现的谈话、主题、情景、重大事件或偶然事件、手段-目的序列、关系模式、内心冲突、强迫观念;在文中最先出现的内容;传主试图通过某种方式特意粉饰或强调其独特性的内容;脱离实际语境的内容;缺乏完整性的内容;传主描述错误的记忆或者对真实事件的歪曲或者忽略了事件中的关键细节;以及在缺乏明确理由情况下的断然回绝。

Choosing a subject to think and write about is the first step in any psychobiographical study, and then the process of working with data follows. Usually, data must be various and psychologically oriented enough to proceed. However, with the large bulk of sources about a subject＇s life history, how to get the cream out of the biographical data is a key issue of psychobiographical study. To effectively solve this problem, Irving Alexander suggested that if the biographical material is related to the following pointers, these data will be selected and analyzed as the object for its unusual prominence and psychological importance. The first indicator is frequency, which refers to any repeated communications, themes, scene, events, happenings, means-end sequences, relationship patterns, conflicts, obsessions, and so on. This indicator can operate in many forms. Primacy, another indicator of psychological saliency, refers to what first appears in the text and often takes up more space or tells about the unique meaning of something. This applies most usefully to autobiography. The third is emphasis, i.e. people mark as salient what they lay stress on. In other words, when something is deliberately giving emphasis, what is emphasized should merit the attention of the researchers. Emphasis has three forms： over-emphasis, under-emphasis and misplaced emphasis. The fourth is isolation, i.e. material jarringly stands out of the surrounding context and thus seems fit at all. The fifth one is uniqueness, some material that is marked by the subject as unprecedented or somehow especially singular. Our task is to restore the link between the isolated fragments and the unconscious ideas symbolized by the material so as to uncover the deep-structure meaning. The sixth is incompletion. For example, when a subject starts a story and then stops in the middle, or changes the subject, or in whatever way fails to see a thought through to its conclusion. If a biography writer begins a story but forgets to finish it, in effect trailing off without adding necessary details, a kind of avoidance to reach a conclusion, it can be put into this indi- cator. Error, distortion and omission might also signify the presence of psychological salient material, especially the error description of memory or distortion of the real events or ignoring the key details, so error and distortion can assume infinite forms. Omission means just what it might evolve to be. Besides incompletion, omissions can also function as total or partial lacunae--an absence if expectable content. The final one is negation which refers to refusal at the wrong time or in particular,without justified reasons. It also includes a strong flat refusal in the absence of any definite reason to the contrary, strong opposition in face of any given psychological or biographical fact.