This book explores the basic concept of agency and develops it further in psychology, using it to better understand and explain psychological processes and behavior. More importantly, this book seeks to put an emphasis on the role of agency in four distinct settings: history of psychology, neuroscience, psychology of religion, and socio-cultural theories of co-agency. In Volume 12 of the Annals of Theoretical Psychology, the contributors will explore a number of new ways to look at agency in psychology. This volume seeks to develop a systematic theory of axioms for agency. It describes implications for research and practice that are founded on an understanding of the person as an actor in the world. This book also has implications for research and practice across psychology's sub-fields, uniting the discipline through an agentic view of the person.

Introduction.- Part 1.  Historical backgrounds on agency.- Chapter 1: Agency: a historical perspective.- Chapter 2: The providence of associated minds: Agency in the thought of Giambattista Vico and the origins of social and cultural psychology.- Chapter 3: Editorial synthesis: Historical leads for theory construction in psychology.- Part 2:  Neurosciences look at Agency.- Chapter 4: Neurobiological perspectives on agency: Ten axioms and ten propositions.-Chapter 5: Agency in life.- Chapter 6: A grand synthesis-aided by considering Systems 1 and 2 and incentive motivation.- Chapter 7: The neuroscience of agency and free will.- Chapter 8: Strategies for agency research.- Chapter 9: Editorial synthesis: Neurobiology of Agency:  "Conatograms" and the Ghost in the Machine?.- Part 3: Looking at agency from the top.- Chapter 10: The Relational Basis of Agency: An Integrated Psychological/Theological Approach.- Chapter 11: Agency and Self Experience: The Religious Function of the Psyche.- Chapter 12: Editorial synthesis: Psychology's Purgatory: Situating the theoretical construction of agency.- Part 4: Socio-ecological perspectives on agency.- Chapter 13: Agency of the Psyche:  A transdisciplinary philosophy-of-science paradigm.- Chapter 14:  Agency and creativity in the midst of social change.- Chapter 15: From individual agency to co-agency.- Chapter 16: Editorial synthesis: The explanatory power of agency.