Definition of "pathography" [pathography]

• The retrospective study, often by a physician, of the possible influence and effects of disease on the life and work of a historical personage or group. (noun)
• A style of biography that overemphasizes the negative aspects of a person's life and work, such as failure, unhappiness, illness, and tragedy. "[It] falls into pathography's technique of emphasizing the sensational underside of its subject's life” ( Joyce Carol Oates). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Maraniss's balanced biography is not a "pathography," obsessive about its subject's defects."
• "Many bestselling memoirs and biographies are what Joyce Carol Oates has called “pathography,” or books that focus on the pathological."
• "Broyard wrote this before the boom in what Joyce Carol Oates has called “pathography,” or biography and autobiography that focus on the sordid."