Claude-Hélène Mayer: A Multifaceted Psychobiographer in Two Cultures

Claude-Hélène Mayer was born on June 28, 1975, in Göttingen, Germany as the second daughter and youngest child of a Roman Catholic upper-middle-class family that made its living as technological production entrepreneurs. She is a prolific psychologist and permanent resident of South Africa. Claude attended a high school in Germany and finished with her certificate of qualification for university studies after grade 13. From there she studied

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 in Germany, the UK, and South Africa (SA). She holds master’s degrees in Crime Science (UK) and Ethnology/Intercultural Didactics (Germany) and doctorates in psychology (2016, SA), management (2008, SA), and political science (2004, Germany). Professor Mayer works in private practice as a family systems therapist and a consultant in international economic organizations. During the past years, she has mainly focused her research on shame, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, women in leadership, and psychobiography, meaning she always takes culture as a crucial factor into consideration. Claude has been a scholar of the German Episcopal Scholarship Foundation Cusanuswerk, a scholarship for exceptional gifted Catholic students. She has also received a best paper award at the Southern Africa Institute for Management Scientists conference in 2016, an American Psychological Association Travel Award in 2018, and she has been nominated as a Fellow at the International Academy for Intercultural Research in 2021. Dr. Mayer became the Top Researcher at the College of Business and Economics at the University of Johannesburg in 2020. On a more personal level, Claude is a mother of three children who are aged 21, 14, and 12. She loves traveling, reading, writing, and walking in nature together with her kids. The interview was online between editor Paul H. Elovitz (PHE) and Claude-Hélène Mayer (CHM) in September 2021.

PHE: What brought you to psychobiography?

CHM: When I studied ethnology in Germany, I was quite interested in biographical research and identity development and also explored biographical narrations of individuals living in different cultures. I focused on the identity narrations of individuals living in rural areas of East Africa. From there, I kept working on qualitative approaches to identity narrations and development as well as their relation to sociocultural influences. During the past few years, I also focused on identity development in transcultural situations and on identity and giftedness. In 2014, I started to explore psychobiographical work in more depth and I found a South African scholar, Professor Roelf van Niekerk, who introduced me to the psychobiographical method, encouraging me and fostering my passion for in-depth explorations of life development.

PHE: Of which of your psychobiographical works are you most proud?

CHM: I started looking at the life of Paulo Coelho and then decided that I actually would like to examine the lives of individuals

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who belong to minority groups, individuals who are transcultural in their identity development, and/or those who have grown up in non-Western societies. I am most proud, however, of my psychophilosophical explorations regarding the life and works of Albert Camus and Baruch Spinoza. My personal interest is philosophy, and here I could combine my passion for psychology, identity development, culture, and philosophy. I enjoy working with complex influences on an individual’s life and combining all of these different aspects under the umbrella of psychobiography, which I really enjoyed doing.

PHE: What are you working on now? What is its importance and when do you expect to have it published?

CHM: At the moment, I am working on different psychobiographical projects, such as the edited Beyond Weird: Psychobiography in Times of Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives book. But I am also very interested in exploring the lives of women leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. I particularly like to contribute to opening up psychobiography to more transcultural approaches and insights, especially regarding women leaders since they might have more insight into female role models in politics and/or social agency and impact.

PHE: What is your primary affiliation? Is it anthropology, cross-cultural studies, cultural anthropology, psychology, psychobiography, or something else?

CHM: I do not have a primary disciplinary affiliation. I work in the field of industrial and organizational psychology as a full professor at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, but my approach, like my identity, is absolutely transcultural and transdisciplinary. I do not believe in analytic disciplinary categorization. Rather a systemic approach based on different disciplinary and cultural influences offers the most insights intellectually and in terms of personal development.

PHE: What special training was most helpful in your doing psychobiographical work?

CHM: I have gone through a lot of training, but the most psychobiographically impactful work was my training in family systems therapy and Carl Gustave Jung’s psychology. Both gave me insight in terms of a systemic understanding of meaning-making in identity development and also specific theoretical approaches (e.g.,

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archetypal theory and the interlinkages of identity and spirituality/faith development). I used several of the theoretical approaches in psychobiography and enjoyed applying them to extraordinary individuals’ lives.

PHE: Have you published, or do you plan to publish, an autobiography or any autobiographical writings?

CHM: Yes, I have published several autobiographical pieces. Most of them are anchored in intercultural reflections on identity development across cultures but also about the challenges and also the positive aspects related to the experiences that I have had as a woman in leadership positions. I have written autobiographical accounts from an ethnographical perspective as well as a psychological perspective. Some articles I have written together with colleagues and students, which brought our different autobiographical views together. We explored the similarities and differences experienced from our environment through various perspectives based on our personalities and cultural backgrounds. Finally, I have also written about intercultural conflict experiences at work from autobiographical perspectives and I have been warned several times that these kinds of papers might impact my career negatively since they show my personal experiences, thoughts, and reflections. However, I personally believe that autobiographical papers are extremely important for a deeper understanding of personality issues and identity development.

PHE: What psychobiography have you published?

CHM: Yes, I have published a few psychobiographical works, such as ones on Paulo Coelho, Angela Merkel, Baruch Spinoza, Albert Camus, Karl Lagerfeld, and a few that are upcoming, including studies of Ferdinand Piech, Albertina Sisulu, Michael Jackson, and Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahan.

PHE: What training should a person entering psychobiography/psychohistory today pursue?

CHM: A grounding in narrative analysis, psychological theory, life cycle research, and developmental psychology are quite helpful. It obviously helps to have practical therapeutical training to integrate theory into psychobiography. Psychoanalytic training can be extremely helpful in exploring issues related to the unconscious. Although I have not had this training, I think it could help me to see and interpret issues in different and in-depth ways.

PHE: How does it feel to be White in South Africa and what

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does this teach you about issues of “us” and “them”?

CHM: I am often not experienced as a “White” person in South Africa; rather, I am seen as being “German” since people can tell that I am not a South African White. So, the racial ascription often changes to national. Frequently, “Germanness” in the South African context is positively associated with “working hard,” high technological standards, and effectiveness.

PHE: What does it mean to teach/live in two cultures (Germany and South Africa) as a “global traveler”?

CHM: I believe it is a wonderful experience to work globally and live in a bicultural world. I have taught in many different countries (Austria, France, Germany, Poland, South Africa, Switzerland, India, and Vietnam), and all of my research projects are driven by diversity in the research teams as well as international and intercultural influences. I find it very stimulating to work and live in at least two cultures because it always allows the person to look at experiences or a situation from a minimum of two cultural points of view and provides you with a constant socio-cultural choice of how to react to a situation from two cultural sides—in addition to all the other personal choices we may have.

This bicultural knowledge affords me with an experience of freedom and becoming conscious about our socio-cultural determinations as well as the ability to step out of them and look at a situation from a different angle. That was extremely important for me during COVID-19 when I was able to see the reactions to the disease from German and South African viewpoints. It provided me with the experience to see what choice you have as an individual to react to an external, unchangeable situation by changing your point of view. A bicultural life, in my opinion, provides me with inner richness, and I am extremely grateful for it.

PHE: What are some of the African perspectives you voice in the Global North?

CHM: At the moment, I am working on an article that uses African life philosophy to interpret the life development of an American celebrity. I believe that Western psychological and philosophical theories have often been used to interpret the life development of extraordinary African individuals while hardly being implemented the other way around. To live in a holistic and integrated world that functions on mutual respect and transculturality, psychobiographers also need to consider theories other than Western-centric

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ones to contribute to a more holistic and transcultural understanding of human beings. It is like an experimental approach that is worth its trial to acknowledge the theoretical contributions of African or other non-Western scientists and theoreticians.

PHE: How do you see psychobiography developing in the next decade?

CHM: In line with what I have said above, I believe that psychobiography will develop into a more holistic, integrated, and transcultural science. It might even develop within the discipline of psychology as a recognized science. With the new developments in the technological era and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we might see a strengthening of a movement within psychology that will put the person more into the center of the analysis.

PHE: What do we as psychohistorians need to do to strengthen our work?

CHM: I believe that psychohistorians could emphasize the connection of the past to the present more and emphasize the value that psychohistory could have for the people who are alive today. This is what I tried to do when I explored the life of Baruch Spinoza. I really wanted to highlight which lessons can be drawn from his life and be applied to today in order to better cope and manage life well. I believe that although people have lived in different times, much of their knowledge and ways of dealing with challenges could help people today increase their self-reflection and methods of doing things in a different and maybe even better way.

PHE: What is the importance of childhood to psychobiography?

CHM: Our childhood is foundational to our entire life and it is so important in terms of setting up our mindsets, emotions, cognitive abilities, behavior, and affectional states. It determines our life like no other phase in our lifetime. Psychohistory should therefore focus on childhood developments in a specific way and also highlight in comparative studies how childhood is formed in different people at different times to see how childhood development is contextualized and provide different views in different epochs and sociocultural contexts.

PHE: Some Forum researchers have been struggling with the issue of identification with a particular parent and achievement. If you would like to comment on this, it would be helpful to them.

CHM: That is a good question. We can see in some psychobiog-

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raphies that, for example, extraordinary entrepreneurs seem to have often lost their fathers early. This is what I came across in the literature and during discussions with colleagues. It was interpreted in a way that the male entrepreneurs had to contribute to their families of origin in an outstanding way and therefore pushed their way ahead to achieve more than others. At the same time, they also did not feel restricted by their fathers but instead experienced the freedom of choice and could explore their limitations while pushing their boundaries. Personally, I have not researched this but I am intrigued by it, especially regarding how the early death of the father impacts extraordinary women.

PHE: In your experience and life, are high achievers more identified with their fathers, and are psychohistorians more father-identified than other people?

CHM: I would not say so since the relationship of the father and the son always needs to be looked at from a family systems perspective. Child development is influenced by so many factors, so I could not say that high achievers are more identified with their father than their mother. This might be a prominent aspect in psychobiographical research especially because many psychobiographers are male and therefore focus on this relationship. But what does that then mean for women and female psychobiographers?

PHE: Following up on an issue raised by Freud, what is the impact of parental loss on your level of achievement and those of subjects you have studied?

CHM: As I highlighted above, a parental loss may strongly impact the following generation to achieve either what the parents expected from them or what they did not at all expect. However, I wonder if this is not a culture-specific finding. Would this be universal? We know that in some cultures there is not even a word for “achievement” and now I would like to ask how an experience of loss can impact achievement if it’s not even a cultural concept in some contexts. It might also be that the parental loss leads to extreme depressive states of being in an individual and not to achievement at all. One would need to look at all of these questions from culture-specific and culture-general perspectives and explore them in-depth and in a very differentiated way while also considering personality traits.

PHE: Every year in my Hitler, the Holocaust, and Genocide course I role play Viktor Frankl. In co-researching a psychobiography of him, what did you learn about Frankl’s psychobiography?

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CHM: His archetypes play a role in the ways he managed his life and how he transformed the challenges of his life into strengths. It was very important for me to learn that he did experience extremely difficult times and he worked through all of the extreme experiences of loss, pain, and suffering. In the end, he managed to live a meaningful life in which the extremely negative experiences were integrated into building his strengths. I believe this is a very important aspect of his life that makes him fascinating to many people.

PHE: How do you explain the growth and psychology of fundamentalism? What is the danger of it in post-Merkel Germany?

CHM: In Germany, we’re seeing a revival of fundamentalism and extremism (in particular, right-wing movements), which we can see in many other countries all over the world as well. However, we can also see a tremendous increase in awareness of the importance of environmental protection (the green movement). Besides the movement in Germany, we can see in other European countries, particularly Spain, France, and Italy, that extremists and fundamentalists are on the rise, which might often be connected to feelings of insecurity, meaninglessness, anxiety, and an experienced loss in protection and safety.

During the past few years, we have seen that a lot of fundamentalists from all over the world settle in Germany who have built or reconstructed their international networks. This is a threat for not only Germany but also the world. However, it is not directly connected to the post-Merkel era, but rather to a global development happening over the course of many years. Many societies have not found adequate ways of dealing with fundamentalism to change it in its root cause. Fundamentalism needs counter-movements on different levels in which individuals do not feel lost, unprotected, vulnerable, and forgotten, but instead feel integrated, connected, and valued on an individual and socio-cultural group level. The danger in the post-Merkel era will probably be a further disintegration of different groups within the (German) society and an increase in fundamentalist thoughts and radicalization. Politicians need to ensure they are listening to the voice of the people within a multicultural society and find ways to value differences and certify feelings of safety and worth.

PHE: What are your thoughts on the psychology and psychodynamics of violence in our world? Do you see specific patterns in the psychobiography among leaders choosing violent solutions and

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of violent terrorists?

CHM: I believe we can see violence occurring often when people feel threatened and are struggling for survival, feeling that they have to give up too much of their own (identity, land, possessions, or lifestyles). Then, it often comes to violent acts. To prevent violence, we need to foster values such as faith, hope, and love while also building up education to create useful life skills, which support individuals to create awareness about their own values and skills navigating their lives through shadow aspects toward a positive and non-violent approach to the self and others. I believe that we can see in several psychobiographies of individuals with non-violent approaches to life that these individuals foster love and self-love, faith, and meaning with an interest at heart that caters to the social welfare of others. At the same time, I believe that leaders who foster violence usually lack love, faith, and meaning. Simultaneously, the life of individuals choosing violent solutions often experience disruptions in their life, trauma, lack of parental care, or the care and guidance of others during their life.

PHE: As a leader and scholar who has published extensively on leadership, how can we recruit new people to the field?

CHM: I believe we really have to publish more on psychobiography and expand the field and the knowledge about it to different outlets. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that the passion psychobiographers have can easily spread to young and upcoming researchers, which can help to recruit them into the field. We also need a strong international network to come together and advance the science and establish it further. Finally, we need to go out there, to conferences and events, to spread the work and share our valuable insights.

PHE: How has being a mother impacted your scholarship and understanding of psychobiography?

CHM: Being a mother strongly impacted my development as not only a person but also as a scholar in psychobiography because in psychobiography we always get into a relationship with the subject as well as the subject’s family members. We often read about how, in these families, roles are filled and we analyze and reflect upon these roles. Surely, I may be biased in terms of gender biases and also being a mother when it comes to viewing life stories. For example, when I wrote about Karl Lagerfeld’s life, his relationship with his mother drew my attention because it was an extremely close and intense one that fostered his extraordinary giftedness in

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many ways. So, as women and mothers, we look at life stories maybe in different ways than male psychobiographers and fathers do. We might focus on different aspects and maybe we have an even more resource-orientated view on life than male researchers. But this is just a thought. I believe other intersectionalities, such as our age, our origin, and our sociocultural background all influence the way we understand psychobiography and our subject.

PHE: What books were important to your development?

CHM: I always enjoyed reading the French existentialists, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. They were all very important in defining my views on meaning, life, death, and gender roles.

PHE: Who was important to your development as a student of psychosocial phenomena? Did Erik Erikson have an impact on you?

CHM: Erikson had an impact, particularly concerning my research interest in identity development. But I also, for example, explored David S. Hoopes as a scholar who developed an intercultural identity development model. Besides that, I learned a lot from early ethnologists since I studied cultures and cultural sciences for a very long time. I looked at different theories of various social anthropologists and philosophers, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, and also at the lives and work of anthropologists, such as Ruth Benedict, Margret Mead, and Gregory Bateson.

PHE: Are there any mentors who come to mind?

CHM: I believe that I really enjoyed reading Carl Gustav Jung, who had quite an impact on me regarding my work in therapy as well as exploring the light and shadow sides of personalities and identities. I enjoy his approach to the unconscious and also his work with dreams and archetypes. I did use his archetype theory in psychobiography, but I also see parts of his work having quite an influence on myself and my own personal and professional development.

PHE: What is your psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic experience and what is its influence on you as a psychobiographer and scholar? How has it changed your vision of the world?

CHM: Since I am coming from a systems dynamic background, my experience has helped me to see and understand thoughts, feelings, and behavior in a more complex and differentiated way, always looking at an occurrence or a development from various per-

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spectives. It has also taught me not to stay with the first assumption or hypothesis that comes up (e.g. interpreting a behavior in a certain context) but rather to look at many different possible interpretations. Looking, for example, at phenomena in previous generations in my family has helped me to understand why I lead parts of the life I am living. It has shown me what contributed to some of the very impactful life decisions I made and why I find solutions for challenges in the way that I do. It has also supported my understanding of how I conduct myself in relationships and why I choose the relationships I have (or have not) in my life. There are certainly several aspects that I am still trying to understand more fully.

That is what I am also trying to do within the psychobiographies I write and my education. I do not stop working myself into different disciplines because I believe that a holistic understanding of the lives and the worlds that I focus on is my ideal.

PHE: How do you define psychobiography?

CHM: Psychobiography for me is the study of the lives of extraordinary individuals from a psychological and transdisciplinary stance. Psychohistory is the study of historical events and times—primarily focusing on the intertwining of individual developments in the context of past sociocultural forces from a psychological perspective.

PHE: Please list the five people who you think have made the greatest contribution to psychobiography/psychohistory in order of their contribution.

CHM: William McKinley Runyan made major contributions to life history and psychobiography and was most influential and pioneering in this field. I enjoyed reading his books on life history and psychobiography and psychology and historical interpretation.Dan McAdams really had an impact on narrative psychology and through his model of life story development and human identity, he had an impact on the field of psychobiography. His work on the redemptive self was important to me with regard to personality development. I also enjoyed reading his books on different presidents of the U.S.A third American is Joe Ponterotto, who has a more recent major influence in psychobiography. I believe two of his contributions that are really impactful are his works on ethics and psychobiography and his contributions to research methodologies in psychobiography.

In South Africa, my colleague Roelf van Niekerk is the

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most influential researcher in psychobiography together with Paul J Fouché. As a research team, they have made major contributions to the field of psychobiography on the African continent and have explored the life of many historical figures in South African society. Besides that, they have fostered research on psychobiography at different universities in South Africa and have motivated many students working in this area.

PHE: The first three colleagues are a talented group I know since they have all been published in Clio’s Psyche. One thing that strikes me, and which I wrote about in reviewing Todd Schultz’ psychobiography handbook, is the extent to which academic psychologists work in a “separate tent” than we in psychohistory have been constructing for as long and I believe even a longer time. One of our goals in creating the psychobiography research group of the Psychohistory Forum is for us all to know of each other’s work and work together to strengthen a vital scholarly endeavor. Thanks for an informative and valuable interview.

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