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 Kelly’s 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 people’s points of view

3. Constructive Alternativism • Basic Postulate: “A person’s 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 Kelly’s 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 one’s own construct system * Kelly chooses to use the term “transition” – a change of gear

13. Kelly’s Emotional vocabulary • Guilt – is a dislodgement of the self from one’s core constructs • Threat – is an awareness of an imminent change in one’s 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 person’s 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