Studying persons in context: Taking social psychological reality seriously

Herein, I describe and illustrate the materiality and objectivity of sociocultural and psychological reality. I contend that many well-known problems in ensuring that psychological inquiry is obviously and properly connected to its primary subject matter, “persons in context,” may be understood as related to the apparent inability of many psychologists and schools of psychology to take historically-established sociocultural and psychological reality seriously. The example I use is a brief, joint biographical study of the sociocultural and psychological contexts within which Carl Rogers and B. F. Skinner were positioned and came to position themselves with respect to issues of freedom and control. This study provides a particular and concrete example of the sociocultural and psychological constitution of personhood, selfhood, and human agency as emergent and lived in particular lives. Throughout the article, the material, objective bases for social-cultural and psychological personhood are emphasized.