Mark P. Freeman, Ph.D.

College of the Holy Cross
Professor of Psychology
Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society

Contact Information:
College of the Holy Cross
1 College Street, Worcester, MA 01610

Email: mfreeman@holycross.edu
Phone: 508-793-3081
Office: Beaven Hall 331
Web: http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/mfreeman/

Mark Freeman received his B.A. in Psychology from the State University of New York at Binghamton (now Binghamton University) in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of Chicago in 1986. He is currently Professor of Psychology and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society at the College of the Holy Cross.

His most recent book, Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward (Oxford, 2010), 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. Hindsight therefore serves as a vitally important source of self-understanding, wisdom, and moral growth.

Freeman is also the author of Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative (Routledge, 1993), which received the Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Award in 1994; Finding the Muse: A Sociopsychological Inquiry into the Conditions of Artistic Creativity (Cambridge, 1994), which was designated an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice magazine in 1995; and numerous articles on memory, self, autobiographical narrative, and the psychology of art and religion. He is currently at work on a book titled The Priority of the Other: Attention, Devotion, Transcendence, which seeks to complement his longstanding interest in the self with an in-depth exploration of the category, and place, of the other in psychological life.   

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