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The Psychology of Personal Constructs
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Personal Construct Psychology is a
"new" (in fact more than sixty years old!) approach
to psychology which tentatively has been
characterised as "person-centred", "cognitive" or "humanistic". That
means that the focus is on the "personal" ways that individuals use to
"construe" (understand, interpret,and
even actively design) their world. It was developed by George A. Kelly
(1905-1967), a clinical psychologist working in the United States of
America.
Thus originating in the clinical field of psychotherapy and also
considered a new view on personality theory, this approach is
now being used by scholars and practitioners in various other
disciplines where "personal views" are of interest, such as education,
organisation, but even architecture and industrial design. The
theoretical underpinning was published in Kelly's seminal work in 1955:
George A. Kelly
(1955). The Psychology
of Personal
Constructs. Vol. 1: A theory of Personality. Vol. 2: Clinical Diagnosis
and Psychotherapy. New York: Norton. (2. printing 1991. London:
Routledge.)
Other than
other person-centred approaches (like
psychoanalysis), PCP does not
impose theoretical concepts on the clients or subjects of its interest
but rather follows people's own "theories" of themselves and of life in
general. Of special importance is
therefore an "idiographic" instrument of
research and
assessment that Kelly invented to study
personal constructs, the Repertory
Grid Technique. Because it combines quantitative and
qualitative
principles, it now catches the
interest even of researchers and practitioners not based in Personal
Construct Psychology, especially those who are unhappy with
standardised empirical measurement techniques.
Some experts see Kelly as a - rarely acknowledged - forerunner of
"postmodern" approaches in the humanities that now are often called
"constructivist". However, both Personal Construct Theory and the
Repertory Grid Technique merit an interest in their own right. In a
way, it took Kelly's ideas about one
generation to be acknowledged in a broader sense. But now the arrival
of the Internet has made it much
easier to become acquainted with Kelly's still fresh ideas.
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