March | 2017 | Philosophical Therapist

agency hand Agency is a philosophical term that refers to one’s ability to act in a given situation. When discussing the nature of free will and responsibility, it is important to be mindful of how much agency a person has. If there’s an electrical fault in your house and you’re alone, there might not be anything you can do about it. If you’re a trained electrician, there might be a great deal you could do to fix the problem. However, being knowledgeable about electronics might not be enough if your tools are at your workplace. Thus, agency depends on both having the knowledge and having the means. A person with electrical training and tools has full agency over the problem of the electrical fault, whereas a person with no training and no tools has no direct agency over their electrical problems. They will have to pay someone who does have agency in this situation to fix it. Despite sounding so simple, problems with agency account for a lot of drama in relationships. This article will discuss a healthy sense of agency and then compare it to unhealthy perceptions of agency such as hyper-agency and hypo-agency. Continue reading →

Today I was sick at home with a the remnants of the flu to get over. So I decided to create a Twitter account for Philosophical Therapist and join in the cut throat world of snide, but sometimes humorous, tweeting. I like using Twitter sometimes to find interesting articles to read, so if I like them or loathe them I will try to remember to tweet about it for the fine folk wanting to follow me. However, today an article came up that hit me very emotionally. It was a news story about a homicide and an attempted homicide committed by a mother against her two sons. It happened in the north of my state in a place I used to visit over twenty years ago to spend time with my grandfather. Suffice it to say, it was a place I have many happy memories of and it is sad to think of it as being the setting for such a horrible crime. However, during the day, twitter kept me informed of updates to this event.

The grandmother of the boys had hired a lawyer and was blaming the government for her daughter’s actions. Her daughter was 27 years old and had two boys, the eldest was nine and the youngest was five years old (now presumed deceased). Her lawyer made the statement that her daughter was an ice addict and that she had not wanted her daughter to live with her and had been trying to kick her out of her home. That if the government had just taken her daughter and grand children from her when she wanted them to then none of this would have happened. At this point there has been no mention whatsoever of any fathers. Neither the father(s) of the two boys, or of the mother’s father. Continue reading →