Table of Contents

Preface 1. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE QUESTION OF AGENCY Some Relevant Background for What Follows Psychology's Disavowal of Agency The Basic Error Method over Substance Aspirations 2. REDUCTIONISM IN PSYCHOLOGY A Historical Sketch Identity versus Requirement Omissions Summary and Implications Research Practices and the Construction of Pseudo-Psychological Kinds Causal Woes Variability and Its Statistical Treatment Manufacturing and Generalizing Psychological Entities The Role of Professional Psychology The Example of Self-Concept Another Kind of Reductionism in Psychology An Antidote in Brief 3. BETWEEN HARD DETERMINISM AND RADICAL FREEDOM Definitions and Distinctions A Critical Consideration of Some Notable Attempts at Soft Determinism Philosophical Considerations Psychological Considerations Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory Theory of Mind and Intentional Self-Development Theoretical Psychology of Agency Hermeneutics and Agency 4. THE UNDERDETERMINATION AND IRREDUCIBILITYOF AGENCY An Argument for the Underdetermination of Agency Structure of the Argument Against Full Physical-Biological Determinism Against Full Sociocultural Determinism Against Randomness and Unconscious Processes Alone Agency as the Surviving, Plausible Option Contemporary Programs of Reductionism and the Irreducibility of Agency Central State Materialism Supervenience and Functionalism Computational Models of Mind What Is Missing in Reductive Functionalism and Computationalism? Summary and Links 5. A THEORY OF SITUATED, EMERGENT, AND DELIBERATIVE AGENCY Levels of Reality Being-in-the-World Tiered Reality An Existential Starting Point and a Brief Conception of Personhood The Developmental Emergence of Situated, Deliberative Agency and Psychological Kinds Understanding and Care within Traditions of Living Summarizing Our Theory of Agency and Psychological Kinds Implications for Understanding Psychological Phenomena A Final Word 6. PUTTING AGENCY INTO PSYCHOLOGY Re-envisioning Psychological Research: Reinforcement Theory and Beyond Reinforcement Theory Revisited Beyond Reinforcement Theory Re-envisioning Psychological Practice The Nature of Psychotherapy The Practice of Psychotherapy The Education of Psychotherapists The Sociopolitical Consequences of Situated, Emergent, and Deliberative Agency Liberalism and Communitarianism The Political Disposition of a Situated, Emergent, and Deliberative Agency A Concluding Comment References Index

About the Author

Jack Martin is the Burnaby Mountain Endowed Professor of Education at Simon Fraser University. He is the coeditor (with Lisa Tsoi Hoshmand) of Research as Praxis: Lessons From Programmatic Research in Therapeutic Psychology, and the author of several books including (with Jeff Sugarman) The Psychology of Human Possibility and Constraint, published by SUNY Press. Jeff Sugarman is Assistant Professor of Education and Janice Thompson is Associate Dean of Education at Simon Fraser University.