Psychological Agency: Theory, Practice, and Culture

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.

Sundar Sarukkai, a member of the Leonardo Editorial Board, is a Fellow in the History and Philosophy of Science Unit, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from Purdue University. Recipient of various fellowships, including the Homi Babha Fellowship and David Ross Fellowship, Sarukkai has been a visiting scholar at MIT and Stanford University and authored the books *Translating the World: Science and Language* (University Press of America, 2002) and the forthcoming *The Philosophy of Symmetry.* Sarukkai publishes and lectures worldwide in science and philosophy journals and conferences and currently serves as a consultant to a project on the relevance of Gandhian thought to contemporary India. He presently holds a PHISPC Fellowship to write a book on Indian philosophy and the philosophy of science.