The Psychology of Human Possibility and Constraint

by Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman

This book addresses one of the most enduring debates within psychology, namely, the conflicting claims of those who adopt an individual, cognitivist perspective and those who adopt a social, culturalist perspective. The authors examine this debate and provide fresh insights that permit the bridging of traditional dualisms between self and society with respect to the subject matter of psychology, and between scientism and relativism with respect to knowledge about this subject matter.

Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Jack Martin began as an educational and counselling psychologist, and he spent many years as a researcher of counselling and psychotherapy. By mid-career, he became devoted to the history and theory of psychology and psychiatry. At the end of 2018, he retired from his position as Burnaby Mountain Chair of Psychology at Simon Fraser University. He is a Fellow of the Canadian and American Psychological Associations, former President of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (STPP), lead editor of the Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, and recipient of the STPP’s Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Much of his later career work has focused on the psychology of personhood and the psycho-biographical study of individual lives.

After publishing scholarly books throughout his career, in his retirement he has turned to writing nonfiction for a general audience. His first book of this kind was Hometown Asylum: A History and Memoir of Institutional Care, in which he tells the story of the large psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of his hometown of Ponoka, Alberta where his father was employed, his grandmother was a patient, and he worked as an institutional attendant while completing his degrees in psychology at the University of Alberta. Peter & Pierre is a dual biography of Peter Lougheed and Pierre Elliott Trudeau that draws on long-standing interests in psychobiography and political history.