This chapter attempts to describe the emergence of the latter use of agency through contemporary medical, sociological, psychological and ethical writing and argues that the new application of the term reflects more than a change of semantic fashion but rather a fundamental reconstruction of patients’ identity that began in the second half of the 20th century. Parsons, T described the significance of the sick role in medical encounters he identified three salient features of the situation of patients: namely, helplessness, technical incompetence and emotional involvement. Hochbaum's analysis pointed in three new directions. The first was the refining and fine‐tuning of those psychological mechanisms that underpinned the state of readiness; the second, the application of that psychological state to symptom appraisal; and the third, the promotion of autonomous action based on these appraisal process and interpretive processes.