The Psychology of Personhood Philosophical, Historical, Social-Developmental, and Narrative Perspectives

What is a person? Surprisingly little attention is given to this question in psychology. For much of the past century, psychology has tended to focus on the systematic study of processes rather than on the persons who enact and embody them. In contrast to the reductionist picture of much mainstream theorising, which construes persons as their mental lives, behaviours or neurophysiological particulars, The Psychology of Personhood presents persons as irreducibly embodied and socially situated beings. Placing the study of persons at the centre of psychology, this book presents novel insights on the typical, everyday actions and experiences of persons in relation to each other and to the broader society and culture. Leading scholars from diverse academic disciplines paint an integrative portrait of the psychological person within evolutionary, historical, cultural, developmental and everyday contexts.

1. Introducing persons and the psychology of personhood Jack Martin and Mark H. Bickhard; Part I. Philosophical, Conceptual Perspectives: 2. The person concept and the ontology of persons Michael A. Tissaw; 3. Achieving personhood: the perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology Charles Guignon; Part II. Historical Perspectives: 4. Historical psychology of persons: categories and practice Kurt Danziger; 5. Persons and historical ontology Jeff Sugarman; 6. Critical personalism: on its tenets, its historical obscurity, and its future prospects James T. Lamiell; Part III. Social-Developmental Perspectives: 7. Conceiving of self and others as persons: evolution and development John Barresi, Chris Moore and Raymond Martin; 8. Position exchange theory and personhood: moving between positions and perspectives within physical, socio-cultural and psychological space and time Jack Martin and Alex Gillespie; 9. The emergent ontology of persons Mark H. Bickhard; 10. Theorizing personhood for the world in transition and change: reflections from a transformative activist stance on human development Anna Stetsenko; Part IV. Narrative Perspectives: 11. Identity and narrative as root metaphors of personhood Amia Lieblich and Ruthellen Josselson; 12. Storied persons: the double triad of narrative identity Mark Freeman.

What is a person? Surprisingly little attention is given to this question in psychology. In contrast to much mainstream theorising, The Psychology of Personhood presents persons as irreducibly embodied and socially situated beings, providing a broad range of perspectives, including philosophical, historical and socio-developmental.

Jack Martin is Burnaby Mountain Professor in Psychology at Simon Fraser University. He is an Associate Editor of New Ideas in Psychology and is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology and Theory and Psychology.
Mark H. Bickhard is Henry R. Luce Professor in Cognitive Robotics and the Philosophy of Knowledge at Lehigh University. He is Editor of New Ideas in Psychology.