ABSTRACT
Historical ontology is an approach to studying psychological description that presumes that personhood is a historical project. Persons belong to place and time. They can be understood only by investigating the historically specific constellations of conditions in which psychological descriptions arise and human agents become the kinds of beings so described. Historical ontology entails tracing how features of persons are articulated and made intelligible, legitimated, and altered by practices of definition and exclusion. It seeks to reveal where, when, and how psychological description takes place, the purposes it serves, how it is implemented and sustained, and its effects and implications. The value of historical ontology to psychological explanation and understanding is found in its orientation: investigating the self-descriptions and practices of a sociopolitical-historical context to reveal the conditions of possibility it furnishes for producing certain kinds of persons.
