Biography
Mark Freeman is pursuing three distinct, yet interrelated, lines of research. The first of these, to which Freeman has devoted much of his attention throughout his career, is philosophically-oriented work in what has come to be known as “narrative psychology” — which in the present context refers to that portion of psychology which looks toward narratives (e.g., autobiographies, memoirs, life histories) to explore such topics as autobiographical memory, personal identity and the cultural fashioning of personal experience. Of special relevance in this context is Freeman's book Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward (Oxford, 2010), which explores the idea that there is much that we can know about ourselves only in retrospect; looking backward over the personal past, we can frequently see what we either could not or would not see earlier on as well as discern the contours of our unfolding life stories. Perilous though the process may sometimes be, it is also one of great promise, allowing us not only to see the possible errors of our ways but to transcend them. Also relevant in this context is Do I Look at You with Love? Reimagining the Story of Dementia (Brill | Sense, 2021), which explores Freeman's mother’s dementia over the course of some 12 years, and his co-edited volume with Hanna Meretoja, The Use and Abuse of Stories: New Directions in Narrative Hermeneutics (Oxford, 2023).
The second line of research Freeman has pursued in recent years seeks to chart those regions of human experience that takes us beyond the self and, on some level perhaps, beyond culture. Aesthetic and religious experience figure prominently in this line of inquiry as does “transcendent” experience (through art, nature, etc.) more generally. While the first area of research focuses largely on the category of the self, this second area focuses more on the category of the “Other,” i.e., that which draws us out of ourselves and into the world. Most relevant in this context is my Freeman's book The Priority of the Other: Thinking and Living Beyond the Self (Oxford, 2014), an in-depth exploration of the category, and place, of the Other in psychological life.
Freeman's third area of research concerns what he calls the “poetic” dimension of both psychological experience and psychological theory. In regard to the former, Freeman is particularly interested in the imaginative processes by which people give meaning to, or find meaning in, experience. In regard to the latter, his primary aim has been to fashion modes of theorizing about experience that broaden the meaning of psychological “science” and that, in turn, serve to integrate scientific and humanistic inquiry. Taking this set of ideas one step further, Freeman has also become interested in the project of re-imagining psychology, or at least a portion of it, as part of the arts and humanities and thereby broadening the scope of the discipline. Central to this endeavor is his most recent book, Toward the Psychological Humanities: A Modest Manifesto for the Future of Psychology (Routledge, 2024).