Philosophical Psychology

Multiple interests and concerns constitute this research area such as the ontology of self, affect, and agency, identity and social action, childhood development, naturalism, the limits of reductionism, the nature of happiness, animal consciousness, the unconscious, self-experience, intersubjectivity, and the nature of schizophrenia.

Several faculty are researching these matters, and many draw upon and contribute to experimental and clinical research, at times in collaborative, interdisciplinary projects.

Such work remains, however, theoretically ambitious and self-critical, drawing upon the history of philosophy as well as the traditions of existential psychiatry, feminist theory, pragmatism, and psychoanalysis, with Emory’s Psychoanalytic Studies Program currently administered through the philosophy department.

Selected Publications

Marta Jimenez. “Aristotle on “Steering the Young by Pleasure and Pain”,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29:2, 2015, 137-164 

Marta Jimenez. “Plato on the Role of Anger in our Intellectual and Moral Development,” Emotions in Plato, Laura Candiotto and Olivier Renaut Eds., Brill, 2020
 
John Lysaker. “Social dysfunction in psychosis is more than a matter of misperception: Advances from the study of metacognition.” Frontiers in Psychology. 14 October 2021. (with Paul H. Lysaker, Ilanit Hasson-Ohayon, Courtney Wiesepape, Kelsey Huling, Aubrie Musselman) 

John Lysaker. “Disturbances in dialogue and metacognition: A renewed way to understand and respond to alterations in self-experience in psychosis.” Theory & Psychology. Vol. 31(3). 2021. – with Paul Lysaker

John Lysaker. Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self. Oxford University Press, 2008 – with Paul Lysaker

Noëlle McAfee. Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis, Columbia University Press, May 2019.

Noëlle McAfee. “Beyond ‘Populism’: The Psychodynamics of Antipolitical Popular Movements,” Populism, September 2021.

Noëlle McAfee. “Our Paranoid Politics,” Feeling Democracy, Rutgers University Press, forthcoming 2022.

Jessica T. Wahman. Narrative Naturalism: An Alternative Framework for Philosophy of Mind. Lexington Books. 2015.

Jessica T. Wahman. “It Depends What the Meaning of ‘Is’ Is: Santayana, Identity Theory, and the Mind-Body Problem.” Under Any Sky: Contemporary Readings of George Santayana. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 34–44  

Cynthia Willett. “Feminist Conceptions of the Self,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015. – with Ellie Anderson

Cynthia Willett. Interspecies Ethics. Columbia University Press. 2014.

George Yancy, Ed. Narrative Identities: Psychologists Engaged in Self-Construction. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005 – with Susan Hadley

George Yancy, Ed. The Philosophical i: Personal Reflections on Life in Philosophy. Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.

Recent Courses