Contemporary psychology is concerned with the description and explanation of behavior, particularly the behavior of biological human beings resident in human societies and cultures. In the social sciences and humanities, such entities are most often understood as persons. As noted in the introductory chapter, since Locke’s (1995) famous essay concerning human understanding initiated the modern history of the topic, persons have been understood in mostly psychological terms.
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Although, as noted in the previous chapter, psychologists typically have ignored or avoided explicit discussion of personhood, most philosophers (past and present) and many others have understood persons mostly in psychological terms. The paradox here highlights once again the difficulties that we believe disciplinary psychology has had in coming to grips with its subject matter.
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Martin, J., Sugarman, J.H., Hickinbottom, S. (2010). Emergent Persons. In: Persons: Understanding Psychological Selfhood and Agency. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1065-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1065-3_5
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