Psychological Agency: Theory, Practice, and Culture

by Frie, Roger

• ISBN13: 9780262562317
• ISBN10: 0262562316
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-01
• Publisher: MIT PRESS

Summary

Agency is a central psychological phenomenon that must be accounted for in any explanatory framework of human action. According to the diverse group of scholars, researchers, and clinicians who have contributed chapters to this book, psychological agency is not a fixed entity that conforms to traditional definitions of free will but an affective, embodied, and relational processing of human experience. Agency is dependent on the biological, social, and cultural contexts that inform and shape who we are. Yet agency also involves the creation of meaning and the capacity for imagining new and different ways of being and acting and cannot be entirely reduced to biology or culture. This generative potential of agency is central to the process of psychotherapy and to psychological change and development. The chapters explore psychological agency in theoretical, clinical and developmental, and social and cultural contexts. Psychological agency is presented as situated within a web of intersecting biophysical and cultural contexts in an ongoing interactive and developmental process. Persons are seen as not only shaped by but also capable of fashioning and refashioning their contexts in new and meaningful ways. The contributors have all trained in psychology or psychiatry, and many have backgrounds in philosophy; wherever possible they combine theoretical discussion with clinical case illustration. Contributors: John Fiscalini, Roger Frie, Jill Gentile, Adelbert H. Jenkins, Elliot L. Jurist, Jack Martin, Arnold Modell, Linda Pollock, Pascal Sauvayre, Jeff Sugarman.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction: The Situated Nature of Psychological Agency	p. 1
Theoretical Contexts	p. 33
The Agency of the Self and the Brain's Illusions	p. 35
Becoming Agents: Hegel, Nietzsche, and Psychoanalysis	p. 51
Understanding Persons as Relational Agents: The Philosophy of John Macmurray and Its Implications for Psychology	p. 73
Clinical and Developmental Contexts	p. 95
Perspectival Selves and Agents: Agency within Sociality	p. 97
Agency and Its Clinical Phenomenology	p. 117
Agency as Fluid Process: Clinical and Theoretical Considerations	p. 137
Dimensions of Agency and the Process of Coparticipant Inquiry	p. 155
Social and Cultural Contexts	p. 175
Psychological Agency: A Necessarily Human Concept	p. 177
Sexual Agency in Women: Beyond Romance	p. 201
Navigating Cultural Contexts: Agency and Biculturalism	p. 223
Contributors	p. 241
Index	p. 243
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