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The study investigates Sol Plaatje’s (1876–1932) spiritual wellness across his lifespan. He was purposively sampled due to his impact upon South African society. As an intellectual, novelist, journalist, and politician, Plaatje was also a founder member of the South African Native National Congress, which later became the African National Congress. His life history reflected a significant degree of spiritual wellness, which was uncovered through the systematic analysis of publicly available life-history materials, including primary and secondary sources. The Wheel of Wellness (WoW) model by Sweeney and Witmer was applied to interpret the biographical evidence of spirituality and meaning in his life. Spirituality, as the central life task of the WoW, and regarded as the most influential domain of a healthy individual, incorporates religious beliefs and other individualised aspects of meaning-making. Findings indicate that spirituality characterised Plaatje’s childhood years and continued to play a role throughout his adult years. His sense of meaning and purpose was personified in the promotion and preservation of human rights and dignity, which embraced inter-racial respect, compassion, and service to others.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was a Dutch, Portuguese-born philosopher who focused on biblical criticism, the concepts of enlightenment and innovative concepts of self and the universe. Born into the Portuguese-Jewish community, he developed controversial ideas on Judaism and the nature of the Divine, leading to being excommunicated from the Jewish community at the age of 23.

This article aims to uncover the meaning of life and death across the lifespan of the extraordinary person, Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997). Frankl was purposively sampled due to his international acclaim as an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, who later became famous as a holocaust survivor and the founder of logotherapy. Through his approach of “healing through meaning,” he became the founder of the meaning-centred school of psychotherapy and published many books on existential and humanistic psychology. The study describes the meaning of life and death through two theoretical approaches: the archetypal analysis based on C.G. Jung’s and C.S. Pearson’s work and a terror management approach based on the melancholic existentialist work of Ernest Becker. The methodology of psychobiography is used to conduct the psycho-historical analysis of the interplay of archetypes and death annihilation anxiety throughout Frankl’s lifespan. The article evaluates how archetypes and death anxiety interacts and how they built meaning in different stages of Frankl’s lifespan. The theories are discussed and illustrated in the light of Viktor E. Frankl’s life.

Holistic wellness theories conceptualise wellness as a multidimensional and synergistic construct. The term wellness refers to a way of life oriented towards optimal health and wellbeing in which body, mind, and spirit are integrated by the individual to live life fully within the human and natural community. The proposed Wheel of Wellness Model incorporate five life tasks that are influenced by seven life forces that are, in turn, influenced by global events. In this study, the model is employed to explore the life of Angela Merkel from a psychobiographical and holistic wellness perspective. Merkel was purposively selected as an extraordinary leader who demonstrated exceptional coping abilities and wellness. Findings show that Merkel's wellness is particularly strong in terms of spirituality and self-direction. Suggestions are proposed how to expand the WoW in the context of latest positive psychology developments and with regard to socio-cultural changes within contemporary societies.

Few psychobiographies have been conducted on influential Colored South Africans. The dehumanizing nature of South Africa’s historical institutionalized racism and discrimination during apartheid motivated an expansion on psychobiographical studies of oppressed persons of colour. This study aimed to uncover and reconstruct the Eriksonian psychosocial ego-strengths or virtues of the controversial and enigmatic poet, academic, political activist, philosopher and social worker, Professor Adam Small (1937–2016). Small was selected as subject via purposive sampling. Alexander’s psychobiographical indicators of salience and a psychosocial-historical conceptualization were used to identify and analyze significant biographical evidence on Small’s life. The findings indicate that Small developed hope, will, purpose and competency as ego-strengths or virtues throughout his first four Eriksonian stages. The apartheid regime’s discrimination against Black ethnic groupings complicated not only the resolution of Small’s identity crisis, but also the attainment of the ego-strength or virtue of a sense of self. Forced removal from his birth-home by the apartheid regime, which Small viewed as an attack on the attachment relationship with his mother, contributed to his mistrust of societal institutions. This challenged the resolution of his eventual establishment of the ego-strengths or virtues of love and wisdom, respectively. Accordingly, the use of Eriksonian theory seems to be apt for uncovering contextualized ego-strengths and virtues of significant persons within dehumanizing contexts.

Charlize Theron is the first South African to win an Oscar for Best Actress. She was born in 1975 and grew up on a farm outside Benoni, South Africa. Despite the rural setting, Charlize’s resourceful mother fostered her artistic leanings. Charlize showed an aptitude for dance and was trained as a classical ballet dancer. However, her parents had a conflictual relationship. Her father is reported to have struggled with alcoholism. When Charlize was 15 years old, her mother killed her father after he threatened their lives during a drunken rage. The act was legally adjudged to have been self-defence and no charges were brought against her mother. Shortly after her father’s death, Charlize won the International New Model Today competition and moved to Italy. Two years later, she relocated to New York and joined the Joffrey Ballet School. Her dance career was curtailed by a severe knee injury and Charlize decided to pursue an acting career instead. After appearing in various films, Charlize won the Oscar for Best Actress in 2004. Film critics described her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster as one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema. Her exceptional achievement was further acknowledged when she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005. Charlize has used her celebrity status to promote philanthropic pursuits. She was honoured by the United Nations in 2008, when she became the organisation’s tenth Messenger of Peace with a special focus on eliminating violence against women. In 2013 Charlize was awarded the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award for her commitment to improving the lives of African youth with HIV and AIDS. She continues to promote women’s rights and frequently acts as an unofficial, but effective ambassador for South Africa.

Continuous development of psychobiographical methodology has culminated in the establishment of best practice guidelines aimed at the production of sound studies that meet the requirements for credibility, transferability, confirmability and dependability. This chapter aims to address the objectivity challenges arising from possible researcher bias during subject selection. The authors propose employing a suitability indicators approach to eugraphic subject selection by considering contextual factors and utilizing the psychosocial concept of generativity in its broadest sense. This would enable the objective selection of subjects from a greater pool of eminent lives than only those well known and potentially idealized. The chapter concludes with the application of these guidelines to the study of two South Africans who, despite several striking differences, had a shared socio-historical context and generative focus, namely their opposition to the apartheid system. Examples from psychobiographical works on Beyers Naude (1915–2004) and Helen Suzman (1917–2009) illustrate the proposed approach.

The study forms part of an emerging trend in South African academic psychobiography in producing more research on exceptional Black persons. Therefore, this psychobiographical study aimed to identify the significant psychosocial-historical turning points in the life of Sol Plaatje (1876–1932), utilizing the lens of Erik Erikson’s theory of lifespan development. The South African Native National Congress (SANNC), later renamed the African National Congress (ANC), co-founded by Plaatje, was created against the backdrop of massive deprivation of Africans’ right to own land. As an enigmatic multilingual political activist and journalist, Plaatje encountered different cultures and demonstrated resilience under trying conditions. His legacy to South African history is widely recognised. In selecting Plaatje as subject via purposive sampling and by applying Alexander’s psychobiographical indicators of salience and a psychosocial-historical conceptualization, it was possible to identify significant biographical evidence that mainly shaped his development as human rights campaigner and novelist. The findings highlight significant psychosocial-historical events or turning points in the life of Plaatje, including: The influence of his missionary education on his linguistic skills; the lifelong preoccupation with the preservation of the Setswana language; and his devotion to the liberation of African people that generated three of his most well-known books, titled: Native Life in South Africa, The Boer War Diary: an African at Mafeking, and Mhudi. These documents were the first of its kind produced in English by a Black South African. Erikson’s psychosocial theory proved valuable for identifying significant psychosocial-historical turning points in Plaatje’s life.