pathography

plural pathographies

1. A biography that highlights the negative aspects of its subject's life.

   2 more examples

   Though this has been an era of magisterial biographies by such writers as Leon Edel, Richard Ellmann, Joseph Frank, Judith Thurman and Justin Kaplan, among others, it has also evolved a new subspecies of the genre to which the name "pathography" might usefully be given: hagiography's diminished and often prurient twin.

   [1988 August 28, Joyce Carol Oates, “Adventures in Abandonment”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   One would think there is little to be added, if only because of the avalanche of books — biographies, meta-biographies, pathographies (to borrow Joyce Carol Oates’s term), memoirs, critical studies, letters, journals, novels — that have been published about Plath since her suicide (which, for some people, is the only thing they know about her).

   2020 October 27, Daphne Merkin, “Shifting the Focus From Sylvia Plath’s Tragic Death to Her Brilliant Life”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

2. medicineA biography that explores the effects of a disease on its subject's life.