Life Positioning Analysis: Sociality, Materiality, and Creativity in the Lives of Carl Rogers and B. F. Skinner

Abstract

Life Positioning Analysis (LPA) is a biographical approach to the study of lives that focuses on the interactions of persons with others and objects within the social, cultural contexts in which their lives unfold. LPA seeks to reveal important aspects of the development of social psychological features of personhood such as perspective taking, agency, and creativity, as these are constituted within the interpersonal and sociocultural exchanges, positions, and perspectives that individuals inhabit and experience throughout their lives. In this chapter, the five-phase method of LPA is discussed and illustrated with concrete particulars drawn from the lives of two of the twentieth century's most famous and creative psychologists---Carl Rogers and B. F. Skinner. These examples help to demonstrate how important aspects of creativity, such as perspective taking and strategic acting, can emerge within the lived experience of human beings through their interpersonal and sociocultural interactivities. This is an emergence that includes the self-determination and purposeful agency that creative endeavor requires.