This book explores major theoretical issues in the study of an individual life through its focus on Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre's quest for an "existential psychoanalysis" led him to develop what he called "true novels" in the landmark studies of Flaubert and others. In clarifying Sartre's philosophical ideas in relation to the analysis of the self, Stuart L. Charme examines the attraction/repulsion of Freudian concepts and explores parallels to Erikson's ego psychology. Certain "mythic" qualities in religious biography and autobiography are seen as central to Sartre, who presents lives—including his own—as normative models.

The book concludes by making a provocative link between the modern preoccupation with self-analysis in biography and autobiography and a fundamental religious need that was once fulfilled by primitive myth.