Jeff Sugarman
Biographic Data
| ID | 4501045 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeff Sugarman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeff |
| FAMILY NAME | Sugarman |
| SIGNATURE | SUGARMAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Simon Fraser University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2609-0636 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 70 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Social justice in fractured times
The article provides a historical overview of the evolution of social justice, a concept the development of which is interwoven with liberal ideology and practices. The inception of liberalism and its various historical levels are examined, explicating the way social justice arose as a significant social value and shifted as liberal thought evolved. The impact and limitations of these understandings and implementations of social justice over the …
Doing justice to subjectivity: Commentary on Louis Sass’s (2022) “A flaw in the great diamond of the world”
Campus culture wars: Is psychology at the front lines
Campus culture wars, psychology, and the victimization of persons
Neoliberalism and the Psychology of Time
An analysis is given of how the contemporary neoliberal order is reshaping the experience and understanding of time, the ways the neoliberal transmutation of time is reorienting and reorganizing individual and collective psychological life, and psychology’s response to the malaise of temporal acceleration. It is argued that the capitalist dynamics of competition and profitability, the collapse of Fordism and rise of neoliberal economics and marke…
Neoliberalism and psychological ethics.
This article draws attention to the relationship between neoliberalism and psychology. Features of this relationship can be seen with reference to recent studies linking psychology to neoliberalism through the constitution of a kind of subjectivity susceptible to neoliberal governmentality. Three examples are presented that reveal the ways in which psychologists are implicated in the neoliberal agenda: psychologists’ conception and treatment of s…
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll: Comment on Mark Freeman’s “Beholding and Being Beheld”
Mark Freeman's reflective explorations into an “ethics of attention” prompt a number of issues and questions raised in this response. These include the historical, particular, situated, and contingent character of ethics and transcendence; Freeman's skepticism; moral criteria for judging varieties of transcendence; the demarcation of ethics; and the kinds of subjectivity compatible with an ethics of attention
Middle-Ground Theorizing, Realism, and Objectivity in Psychology: A Commentary on Held (2007)
Held's (2007) critical analysis of the ontological and epistemological positions of theoretical psychologists whom she labels “middle-ground theorists” is examined, and her own positions concerning realism, truth, and objectivity in psychology are considered. Several key misinterpretations and misunderstandings are identified in Held's account, and her own theoretical framework is judged to be untenable with respect to the phenomena of psychology…
Does Interpretation in Psychology Differ From Interpretation in Natural Science
Following an initial discussion of the general nature of interpretation in contemporary psychology, and social and natural science, relevant views of Charles Taylor and Thomas Kuhn are considered in some detail. Although both Taylor and Kuhn agree that interpretation in the social or human sciences differs in some ways from interpretation in the natural sciences, they disagree about the nature and origins of such difference. Our own analysis foll…
Practical Rationality and the Questionable Promise of Positive Psychology
It is argued that positive psychology is committed to an ideology of technical and instrumental scientific rationality. The article describes features of this ideology, its historical emergence and adoption by disciplinary psychology, its pervasive influence across contemporary life, its problems and dangers, and the way in which it is promoted by positive psychology. By failing to grasp the extent of this influence in their practices and beliefs…
Persons and Moral Agency
Charles Taylor’s claim that personhood consists in its relation to moral goods and commitments, and that persons are moral agents, is summarized and examined. According to this view, persons not only have an understanding of themselves as moral agents, they are partially constituted by this understanding. It is argued that as moral agents, persons are capable of effecting changes in their lives through enacting understandings of the good. Moreove…
Psychology and the Question of Agency (Suny Series, Alternatives in Psychology)
Interpreting Human Kinds: Beginnings of a Hermeneutic Psychology
During the past decade, a number of theoretical psychologists have argued that the subject matter of psychology is distinct from that of the physical sciences in ways that require interpretation as a method of inquiry. Rejecting what they regard as a mistaken scientism in the conduct of traditional psychological research, these hermeneutically inspired theorists also have been critical of what they regard as overly strong anti-realist, anti-subje…
Modernity, postmodernity, and psychology
Modernity, postmodernity, and psychology
Is the Self a Kind of Understanding
Between the modern and the postmodern: The possibility of self and progressive understanding in psychology
Between the modern and the postmodern: The possibility of self and progressive understanding in psychology
Psychology assumes defensible notions of human subjectivity and understanding. Yet, some versions of postmodernism, including some of those currently influential within psychology, eschew the possibility of the kind of understanding-capable personhood on which modern psychology has depended. The authors argue for a skeptical, middle-ground position that might allow psychologists to resist a forced choice between modernism and postmodernism in the…
The Moral Dimension: A Conceptualization and Empirical Demonstration of the Moral Nature of Psychotherapeutic Conversations
The authors argue that counseling psychologists will benefit from the development of conceptual frameworks that focus attention and consideration on the moral dimensions of psychotherapeutic practice. The authors present such a conceptualization with respect to actual psychotherapeutic conversations, and they provide an empirical illustration of how this conceptual framework illuminates the moral dimension of such conversations. The authors also …
Beyond Methodolatry: Two Conceptions of Relations between Theory and Research in Research on Teaching
Two views of the relationships between theory and empirical research are described as Aristotelian and Galilean, following Cassirer 1923) and Lewin (1935). The two conceptions of theory and research differ with respect to the nature of the conceptual models they employ and the roles and expectations they hold for empirical research. These matters are discussed in the context of research on teaching. The Aristotelian versus Galilean distinction is…
The Moral Dimension: A Conceptualization and Empirical Demonstration of the Moral Nature of Psychotherapeutic Conversations
The authors argue that counseling psychologists will benefit from the development of conceptual frameworks that focus attention and consideration on the moral dimensions of psychotherapeutic practice. The authors present such a conceptualization with respect to actual psychotherapeutic conversations, and they provide an empirical illustration of how this conceptual framework illuminates the moral dimension of such conversations. The authors also …
Neoliberalism and the Psychology of Time
An analysis is given of how the contemporary neoliberal order is reshaping the experience and understanding of time, the ways the neoliberal transmutation of time is reorienting and reorganizing individual and collective psychological life, and psychology’s response to the malaise of temporal acceleration. It is argued that the capitalist dynamics of competition and profitability, the collapse of Fordism and rise of neoliberal economics and marke…
Is the Self a Kind of Understanding
Does Interpretation in Psychology Differ From Interpretation in Natural Science
Following an initial discussion of the general nature of interpretation in contemporary psychology, and social and natural science, relevant views of Charles Taylor and Thomas Kuhn are considered in some detail. Although both Taylor and Kuhn agree that interpretation in the social or human sciences differs in some ways from interpretation in the natural sciences, they disagree about the nature and origins of such difference. Our own analysis foll…
Practical Rationality and the Questionable Promise of Positive Psychology
It is argued that positive psychology is committed to an ideology of technical and instrumental scientific rationality. The article describes features of this ideology, its historical emergence and adoption by disciplinary psychology, its pervasive influence across contemporary life, its problems and dangers, and the way in which it is promoted by positive psychology. By failing to grasp the extent of this influence in their practices and beliefs…
Beyond Methodolatry: Two Conceptions of Relations between Theory and Research in Research on Teaching
Two views of the relationships between theory and empirical research are described as Aristotelian and Galilean, following Cassirer 1923) and Lewin (1935). The two conceptions of theory and research differ with respect to the nature of the conceptual models they employ and the roles and expectations they hold for empirical research. These matters are discussed in the context of research on teaching. The Aristotelian versus Galilean distinction is…
Beyond Methodolatry: Two Conceptions of Relations between Theory and Research in Research on Teaching
Two views of the relationships between theory and empirical research are described as Aristotelian and Galilean, following Cassirer 1923) and Lewin (1935). The two conceptions of theory and research differ with respect to the nature of the conceptual models they employ and the roles and expectations they hold for empirical research. These matters are discussed in the context of research on teaching. The Aristotelian versus Galilean distinction is…
The Moral Dimension: A Conceptualization and Empirical Demonstration of the Moral Nature of Psychotherapeutic Conversations
The authors argue that counseling psychologists will benefit from the development of conceptual frameworks that focus attention and consideration on the moral dimensions of psychotherapeutic practice. The authors present such a conceptualization with respect to actual psychotherapeutic conversations, and they provide an empirical illustration of how this conceptual framework illuminates the moral dimension of such conversations. The authors also …
Between the modern and the postmodern: The possibility of self and progressive understanding in psychology
Between the modern and the postmodern: The possibility of self and progressive understanding in psychology
Psychology assumes defensible notions of human subjectivity and understanding. Yet, some versions of postmodernism, including some of those currently influential within psychology, eschew the possibility of the kind of understanding-capable personhood on which modern psychology has depended. The authors argue for a skeptical, middle-ground position that might allow psychologists to resist a forced choice between modernism and postmodernism in the…
Interpreting Human Kinds: Beginnings of a Hermeneutic Psychology
During the past decade, a number of theoretical psychologists have argued that the subject matter of psychology is distinct from that of the physical sciences in ways that require interpretation as a method of inquiry. Rejecting what they regard as a mistaken scientism in the conduct of traditional psychological research, these hermeneutically inspired theorists also have been critical of what they regard as overly strong anti-realist, anti-subje…
Modernity, postmodernity, and psychology
Modernity, postmodernity, and psychology
Is the Self a Kind of Understanding
Psychology and the Question of Agency (Suny Series, Alternatives in Psychology)
Persons and Moral Agency
Charles Taylor’s claim that personhood consists in its relation to moral goods and commitments, and that persons are moral agents, is summarized and examined. According to this view, persons not only have an understanding of themselves as moral agents, they are partially constituted by this understanding. It is argued that as moral agents, persons are capable of effecting changes in their lives through enacting understandings of the good. Moreove…
Practical Rationality and the Questionable Promise of Positive Psychology
It is argued that positive psychology is committed to an ideology of technical and instrumental scientific rationality. The article describes features of this ideology, its historical emergence and adoption by disciplinary psychology, its pervasive influence across contemporary life, its problems and dangers, and the way in which it is promoted by positive psychology. By failing to grasp the extent of this influence in their practices and beliefs…
Middle-Ground Theorizing, Realism, and Objectivity in Psychology: A Commentary on Held (2007)
Held's (2007) critical analysis of the ontological and epistemological positions of theoretical psychologists whom she labels “middle-ground theorists” is examined, and her own positions concerning realism, truth, and objectivity in psychology are considered. Several key misinterpretations and misunderstandings are identified in Held's account, and her own theoretical framework is judged to be untenable with respect to the phenomena of psychology…
Does Interpretation in Psychology Differ From Interpretation in Natural Science
Following an initial discussion of the general nature of interpretation in contemporary psychology, and social and natural science, relevant views of Charles Taylor and Thomas Kuhn are considered in some detail. Although both Taylor and Kuhn agree that interpretation in the social or human sciences differs in some ways from interpretation in the natural sciences, they disagree about the nature and origins of such difference. Our own analysis foll…
Neoliberalism and psychological ethics.
This article draws attention to the relationship between neoliberalism and psychology. Features of this relationship can be seen with reference to recent studies linking psychology to neoliberalism through the constitution of a kind of subjectivity susceptible to neoliberal governmentality. Three examples are presented that reveal the ways in which psychologists are implicated in the neoliberal agenda: psychologists’ conception and treatment of s…
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll: Comment on Mark Freeman’s “Beholding and Being Beheld”
Mark Freeman's reflective explorations into an “ethics of attention” prompt a number of issues and questions raised in this response. These include the historical, particular, situated, and contingent character of ethics and transcendence; Freeman's skepticism; moral criteria for judging varieties of transcendence; the demarcation of ethics; and the kinds of subjectivity compatible with an ethics of attention
Neoliberalism and the Psychology of Time
An analysis is given of how the contemporary neoliberal order is reshaping the experience and understanding of time, the ways the neoliberal transmutation of time is reorienting and reorganizing individual and collective psychological life, and psychology’s response to the malaise of temporal acceleration. It is argued that the capitalist dynamics of competition and profitability, the collapse of Fordism and rise of neoliberal economics and marke…
Campus culture wars: Is psychology at the front lines
Campus culture wars, psychology, and the victimization of persons
Doing justice to subjectivity: Commentary on Louis Sass’s (2022) “A flaw in the great diamond of the world”
Social justice in fractured times
The article provides a historical overview of the evolution of social justice, a concept the development of which is interwoven with liberal ideology and practices. The inception of liberalism and its various historical levels are examined, explicating the way social justice arose as a significant social value and shifted as liberal thought evolved. The impact and limitations of these understandings and implementations of social justice over the …
Psychology (16 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology (10 works) · Psychoanalysis (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Social Representations and Identity (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works)