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Counseling Resources for Clients and Clinicians
Counseling Resources for Clients and Clinicians
We are all on a relational journey. We are all in relationship with our family, friends, social circles, and people in our places of employment. Relating is what gives our lives meaning. Psychotherapists, more recently, and religious leaders and philosophers throughout the ages have contributed to our understanding of how we can have positive and healthy relationships. In the field of psychology, however, little has been written about the role of agency (or free will) until recently and how we, as agents (those acting with free will), interact from within our individual biological nature in our unique social contexts to create healthy relationships.
We are all on a relational journey. We are all in relationship with our family, friends, social circles, and people in our places of employment. Relating is what gives our lives meaning. Psychotherapists, more recently, and religious leaders and philosophers throughout the ages have contributed to our understanding of how we can have positive and healthy relationships. In the field of psychology, however, little has been written about the role of agency (or free will) until recently and how we, as agents (those acting with free will), interact from within our individual biological nature in our unique social contexts to create healthy relationships.
I created this website to provide my clients with a place to learn more about the agency-centered psychological model that underlies my approach to psychotherapy. In this website, I describe the theory of human agency that I use in my psychotherapy practice and why it matters. I, also, provide clinical examples to help clients think agentically. A weekly blog contains insights that I hope can help clients on their journey towards creating positive mental health, and harmonious relationships - what I call healing relations.
I created this website to provide my clients with a place to learn more about the agency-centered psychological model that underlies my approach to psychotherapy. In this website, I describe the theory of human agency that I use in my psychotherapy practice and why it matters. I, also, provide clinical examples to help clients think agentically. A weekly blog contains insights that I hope can help clients on their journey towards creating positive mental health, and harmonious relationships - what I call healing relations.
Website Table of Contents
Home Page: Introduction to this website; why a theory of psychological agency (or free will) is needed for understanding mental health and its treatment; conceptualization of agency for an Agency-Centered Psychology
An Agency-Centered Psychology: Definition and explanation of an agency-centered psychological model
Understanding Agency: A breakdown of the aspects of an Agency-Centered Psychology for client reference
Mental Health Implications: The clinical implications and applications of the aspects of an agency-centered psychology
Blog: Insights and clinical examples from my practice (client identity protected)
About: Background of the author
References: A list of articles and books that I have found helpful.
My psychotherapy clients frequently express, Why am I feeling this way? Why am I now feeling better? Why does this way of relating have better results when I am with my spouse and children? Why does such and such theory work? Many psychotherapists say that they don't know why but that it just works. While the answers are usually complex because our nature is complex, there are answers to the why questions, however, a new way of thinking about our psychology is required to get to this deeper level.
Have you heard the phrase, is it nature or nurture? Psychological science has promoted a narrative that emphasizes a nurture vs. nature theory of what defines us. In other words, is your psychological well-being related mostly to your biological nature or is it related to the environment in which you have and do inhabit? Most researchers say that it is some combination of both. The resulting mental health treatments often lead to prescribing medication and/or to blaming and changing social environments.
While both of these options are useful and important at times, this reductionistic approach to psychology has historically neglected the idea of human agency. Understanding our mental health requires a complex approach that considers how we are "agents" (have free will) and how our agency is intertwined with our biology and the relational social contexts in which we live.
Mental health professionals are tuned into how people act as agents, but then rely on psychological theories that lack or reduce agency (Martin, 2008). They can't properly promote agency in their clients if their theories promote confusion about human agency. Their theories take us away from fully embracing agency and how it empowers us toward living mentally healthy and joyful lives. Many of the prevailing theories in psychology (e.g, cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy, emotionally focused therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, motivational interviewing...etc.) address aspects of the agentic model that is presented here, but not its complexity. Placing agency at the center of our psychological understanding of human nature can shift how we see ourselves and therefore, how we heal ourselves.
Recognizing that we are "agents" introduces needed complexity to the oversimplified nature vs. nurture debate in psychological science. With a correct understanding of what it means to be an agent, nature and nurture become our limits or potentialities rather than what determines who we are and what we can become.
Here I am with my children when they were young. I am asking them to get ready for a photo- one of the more positive moments among many trying ones. My older son chooses to give a hug to his little brother. You can see how this hug delights his younger brother. I love these photos because I can clearly see nature, nurture, and agency, that is, the relational context, their biologically-based temperamental differences (one is shy and one is more social), and their agency to want to make each other smile without my prompting.
Here I am with my children when they were young. I am asking them to get ready for a photo- one of the more positive moments among many trying ones. My older son chooses to give a hug to his little brother. You can see how this hug delights his younger brother. I love these photos because I can clearly see nature, nurture, and agency, that is, the relational context, their biologically-based temperamental differences (one is shy and one is more social), and their agency to want to make each other smile without my prompting.
An Introduction to a Conceptualization of Agency for an Agency-Centered Psychology
Conceptualizing agency is complex, and this may be one of the reasons why psychological theories largely dismiss or marginalize it. In the following paragraphs, I describe what agency is not, hoping to illuminate what it is. The theory of agency (Rychlak, 1994, Williams et al. 2021) upon which I rely in my practice is explained next. Then I share some important points concerning this theory of agency: how our agency is both embedded and, in relationship with, our unique circumstances, how it is both free and determined, and how it can be thought of as the process by which we make meaning that guides action with moral implications. In the pages that follow, I will go into more detail about the definition that I use and its clinical implications. My hope is that these pages will allow readers to do their own thinking about agency. My blog will help readers learn how to apply an agency-centered psychology to their own mental health concerns and questions.
What agency is not....
On the one hand, psychological science tends to define being human as determined by one's biological make up and/or our social contexts. If our biology or social contexts shape us, then we are not free to self-determine our lives and agency disappears. On the other hand, agency is described, rightly, as our freedom to choose, but choosing is often described in a simplified way, divorced from biological and social contexts. This is the libertarian view of agency and not the one that I am presenting here (see Williams et al., 2021).
Following Williams et al. (2021), the definition of agency that I rely on is not focused on the big choices that we make which are well thought out and deliberative (i.e., choosing the college that I should attend, or the person whom I should marry). As agents, we are always making minute, moment to moment, often imperceptible choices that accumulate into particular ways of framing the world and acting in it. Inaction, also, is a choice and so is accepting another's way of framing experience. We sometimes find ourselves yielding to a particular way of framing the world, rather than, consciously focusing on how we want to frame it.
How agency is both free and determined....
Whether or not we embrace the freedom inherent in our agency and bring awareness to how we direct that agency, we always have the agentic power within us to determine our lives. It is important, however, to recognize that there are also constraints on our agency. The minute, moment to moment, choices that we make as agents, are not divorced from, but are constrained and influenced by the biological and social contexts that we inhabit. There is always an interaction between the agent and his or her embodiment and situatedness, which includes the interactions between the agent and other agents in their relational contexts. The idea that I will do it because I can, concentrates only on how we can choose. It overlooks the interaction of the agent's choosing from within contexts of possibilities and limitations with moral implications to oneself and to others. In our relational world, we and others learn how to exercise our agency, hopefully wisely, as our ways of framing the world bump against and coalesce with each other as we live our lives together.
Definitions of agency that focus solely on the power of self-determination also miss the inherent determined aspect to our agency. We are born into this world with certain givens, that is, the biological and social circumstances with which our agency becomes intertwined. Agency, therefore, is not entirely free. I follow Rychlak's definition (1994) of how agency is partly determined. According to Rychlak, our givens provide the initial contexts for our framing of meaningful contents or knowledge that guide our actions in an ongoing fashion as agents engaging in the world. The meanings that we make, through the agentic process, become the frame or lens with which we frame our on-going internal and external experiences, including our experiences with others.
Agency as a meaning making process for guiding action...
We cannot know without knowing. Our on-going creation of frames (what agents do) become our determining contexts for future framing. I think of determining contexts as patterns of meaning that we have organized. Agency, therefore, is a framing process, organizing information from experience into meaningful contents/knowledge/frames/determining contexts that guide action. We, as agents, are framers of our own experience. As our framed meanings become part of our agentic process, the process (agency) and contents (meaning, knowledge, determining contexts) become intertwined over time. It is like making bread. When I add flour, I am still making bread. When I add water to the flour, I am still making bread, but now my bread consists of flour and water. When I add yeast, I am still making bread but now my bread consists of flour, water, and yeast and so on. Bread making is like the agentic process. The ingredients are like the meanings that I make from my experiences. The ingredients that I have added, one by one, now become part of the bread making process. Once I have put my bread into the oven, the plan for baking this loaf of bread is set. I can no longer add or subtract ingredients. External factors such as oven temperature and baking time are now the only influences on the bread making process.
We cannot learn apart from what we have already framed, and this is why agency is in part determined. We cannot escape our determining contexts, but we can freely acknowledge, reorganize, and add to them. (Sauvayre, 2008). Returning to my bread making example, I can make some changes at any point in the process prior to baking. I can add more water, but I cannot remove it. I can start a new loaf and scratch the old one, if I have enough ingredients. The more I engage in the bread making process, maybe even consult recipes or get tips from experienced bread makers, I will become better and more effective at making bread.
The exercise of our agency has moral implications.....
While agency is about our ability to determine our lives, free choice, as a stand-alone concept, misses that there are real life consequences or moral implications for how we exercise our agency. The ways that we direct our agency affect others as well as ourselves in limiting or promoting growth. The consequences of exercising our agency, for our betterment or detriment, gives us feedback for future framing of our on-going internal and external experiences. Feedback is part of the experience we frame as agents in our on-going interactions within our embodied, situatedness. To use the bread making example, a failed or burned loaf, provides feedback for future loaf making or a decision to get into cookie making instead. We can bring awareness to the consequences of our actions so that we grow and learn to engage in behavior that brings positive mental health.
The definition of agency that I use, therefore, captures the way agency is both free and determined at the same time (see Williams et al., 2021). Agency can be thought of like a hinge between determinism and freedom. As agents, we are conceptualizers or organizers of our internal (biological) and external (physical/social/relational) experience. The meanings we freely frame become the determining contexts that guide our actions. Our relational engagement in the world and our observations of the consequences of exercising our agency, allow us to continue to learn and grow and use feedback to alter, adjust, and elaborate, on-going determining contexts brought to the framing of on-going experience.
Hopefully, your understanding will become clearer as you work through these ideas and new ways of thinking that offer one way of understanding how we are agents. My hope is that it helps us step away from the psychological language that traps us into viewing human beings as machines that are acted upon by social forces over which we have limited control. Instead, we are embodied agents interacting and becoming entangled with and in our unique relational spheres. We have the power within us to choose healing and healthy relationships that take advantage of our strengths, to support and unite us.
An agency-centered psychology requires a shift in thinking, a shift in your determining contexts that will bring knowledge and new ways of framing your experience. You will have made this shift if you start to think of yourself as a situated, embodied, relational-moral agent.
In the pages that follow, I will describe the Agency-Centered Psychology that I use in psychotherapy, clinical implications and case examples.
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