Linda N. Edelstein, PhD, is an American clinical psychologist with more than forty years in practice, a former associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and the author of The Writer's Guide to Character Traits, the longstanding Writer's Digest reference that gives novelists access to clinical psychology research without requiring a clinical background. The book has sold more than forty thousand copies across two editions.
The Writer's Guide to Character Traits is built around more than four hundred easy-reference lists of psychological traits, behaviors, and reactions, drawn from clinical research and her own decades of casework. It catalogues child and adolescent development stages, twenty-three adult personality types (the Adventurer, the Boss, the Conformist, the Dependent, the Eccentric, the Fall Guy or Girl, the Loner, the Man's Man, the Ultra-Feminine, and others), mental disorders and how they actually present, the psychology of different criminal styles, sexual development and dysfunction, the effects of major life events on behavior, and verbal and nonverbal communication patterns. The second edition added writing exercises that turn the reference material into a workbook for novelists building character bibles.
Her other psychology titles include Maternal Bereavement: A Clinician's Guide on loss, grief, and adaptation (later expanded as Shattered, with new chapters by her Adult Development graduate students at Northwestern), The Art of Midlife: Courage and Creative Living for Women, and What Do I Say? The Therapist's Guide to Answering Client Questions, co-written with C. Waehler for John Wiley and Sons. She has also published more than forty papers at national and regional psychology conferences.
Her fiction includes the psychological mystery Object of Obsession and the 2025 novel Not the Trip We Planned, co-written with Carol Kerr (Koehler Publishing) after a promise the two women made each other in graduate school to someday write a mystery together. She blogs at chickiesblog and lives in Chicago, Illinois.
