An Introduction to Personal Construct Psychology

1
An Introduction to Personal Construct Psychology

• Helen Jones

2
Introduction

• A brief overview of the key features of George
  Kellys work The Psychology of Personal
  Constructs (Norton, 1955
• A theory that helps people to make sense of their
  personal perspectives and values and to
  understand other peoples points of view

3
Constructive Alternativism

• Basic Postulate A persons processes are
  psychologically channelised by the ways in which
  (s)he anticipates events.
• The person as scientist
• All behaviour is an experiment
• Validation or invalidation are equally useful

4
Four Points of View

• Listen to yourself so that you can suspend your
  views
• Listen to others, in their own terms
• Listen to, and check out, the implications of the
  words you hear
• Take responsibility for predicted outcomes

Text
Text
Text
Text
Text
Text
Text
Text
Text
5
Self Reflexivity

• A theory of personality which is not applicable
  to the person practising it is not likely to
  apply to relate well to others either!
• It is PERSONAL

6
The credulous approach

• The credulous approach implies a belief in what
  the other person says is true for them and viable
  for them.
• The approach implies work on the part of the
  listener to suspend his or her own personal
  perspectives in order to understand the theories
  of the other person

7
Some assumptions behind Kellys theory of
personality

• There is an integral universe
• No one person has direct access to it
• Each individual has a unique personal construct
  system which makes total sense to that individual
• We share some common understandings

8
Assumptions - continued

• We tend to see the world through sets of filters
  seeing some things as alike and thereby
  different from others
• We differ in the ways we make discriminations
• All our ways of seeing things are linked
  internally in a hierarchical fashion

9
More assumptions.

• We communicate with others only when we begin to
  understand their value systems as well as our own
• Our core beliefs are few and highly resistant to
  change
• Organisations have their core structures as do
  individuals understanding this helps

10
Creativity and Decision Making

• Kelly describes creativity as the constant
  weaving between LOOSENING (vague thoughts and
  ideas) and TIGHTENING (making things happen)
• A human tragedy is to live only one, or other, of
  these aspects of the cycle

11
Decision Making

• Kelly describes this as the CPC Cycle
• We CIRCUMSPECT (C) (collect data/information)
• We PREEMPT (P) (make decisions) anticipating that
  the outcome will allow us
• CHOICE/CONTROL(C) over our immediate and longer
  term futures

12
PCP and emotion transitional constructs

• Kelly suggests that we are nothing but a bundle
  of constructs rolling along in time and space
• So emotion is not separate from thinking it is
  more the awareness of the need to reconstrue a
  heightened awareness of ones own construct
  system
• Kelly chooses to use the term transition a
  change of gear

13
Kellys Emotional vocabulary

• Guilt is a dislodgement of the self from ones
  core constructs
• Threat is an awareness of an imminent change in
  ones core constructs
• Anxiety is an awareness that one does not
  immediately have the constructs available to deal
  with a particular situation

14
More emotional vocabulary

• Aggression ( more akin to assertiveness these
  days) is an active elaboration of a persons
  perceptual field doing things in a consciously
  different way
• Hostility (more like cooking the books) is an
  attempt to extort evidence in favour of a social
  prediction which has not worked

15
Further references

• The Psychology of Personal Constructs George
  Kelly, latest edition 18/12/00Wiley, 1991
• A Psychology for Living Peggy Dalton and Gavin
  Dunnett, Wiley, 1992
• Inquiring Man Don Bannister and Fay Fransella,
  Penguin, 1971