pathography

[ puh-thog-ruh-fee ]

noun

, plural pa·thog·ra·phies.

1. a biography that focuses on the negative elements of its subject.

Word History and Origins

Origin of pathography¹

1910–20 for an earlier sense; popularized by Joyce Carol Oates, U.S. writer

Example Sentences

It is these sorts of insights — exploring his fallibility, his shortcomings and even his complicity in an uncaring system — that make Marsh’s writing so powerful and that allow him to transcend the usual pathography.

From Washington Post

Michiko Kakutani, reviewing “Sons of Camelot” in The New York Times in 2004, called the book a “group pathography that dwells predictably on death, dysfunction and bad luck.”

From New York Times

But responsible biographers never set out to produce hagiography or pathography.

From Time

“Then She Fell” addresses the ambiguity of that relationship, but without drifting into the polluted shallows of pathography.

From New York Times

Set entirely in a hotel room in London not long before Garland’s death in 1969, “Rainbow” is theater as pathography.

From New York Times