SELF-AGENCY: FREEDOM AND CONTEXT IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that awareness of and the capacity for personal agency is at the heart of self-experience, and I explore how this agentic self emerges from social interactions, especially selfobject experience. I then illustrate ways in which self-agency can be derailed, disrupted, and even usurped. Finally, I examine the implications of these findings for clinical psychoanalytic practice. There is a paradox at the heart of my thesis – every human being is ineluctably embedded in his or her environment, especially the social environment, and his or her existence, psychologically and physically, is inconceivable outside this context. At the same time, it is this environmental system that gives rise to the capacity for freedom and self-agency.