G ABRIELE C HIARI

George A. Kelly
and His Personal Construct Theory

P UBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE G EORGE K ELLY S OCIETY , 2017

George A. Kelly and His Personal Construct Theory

©2017 Gabriele Chiari

Under the auspices of the George Kelly Society

i
Dedication

To Don, Maria Laura, Miller, and Trevor, four special shipmates on my journey.

ii
Foreword

I thoroughly enjoyed writing this e-book on the life and the work of George A.
Kelly. The task combined my lifelong interest in personal construct theory and psy-
chotherapy together with my amateur passion for historical research and desktop
publishing.

I came up with the idea while trying to give a photographic evidence to my mental
picture of the early years of Kelly’s life: the adventurous life of his maternal grand-
father, the parents’ migration to the West, the farm in the desolate Kansas where
he was born, the colleges he attended. But appetite comes with eating, and so I
kept on sifting through universities’ yearbooks and archives for unpublished im-
ages and further information about Kelly’s academic career. Internet makes all
that possible while sitting at a desk nowadays.

I like the final result. It gives, I think, a fresh image of George Kelly the man, and
helps to appreciate his work in the context of the psychology of his times. I hope
you too like it.

iii
Acknowledgment
The e-book is published under the auspices of the George Kelly Society.
The chapter on the life of George A. Kelly is based mainly on the biography writ-
ten by Fay Fransella, George Kelly, London, Sage, 1995.
I also consulted the e-book in Kindle format written by The Gale Group, A Study
Guide for George Alexander Kelly, in the Series “Psychologists and Their Theories for
Students”, Farmington Hills, MI, Gale, 2015.
Many of the pictures, as well as a lot of information about places, people and his-
tory, are taken from the web, particularly from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Com-
mons. Unless differently specified, the pictures are in the public domain.
I would like to thank Jörn Scheer, who pointed out some errors in the draft, and
gave me permission to publish his pictures of the houses where Kelly had lived at
Worthington, OH, and the picture of the Kellys’ grave.
My thanks also go to Peter Cummins and Harry Procter for their extensive proof-
reading, and to Franz Epting for his detailed precious conribution to Kelly’s biog-
raphy.
A special thank goes to Jacqueline Kelly Aldridge who generously provided me
with five unpublished pictures of her father and his family and with personal infor-
mation about the period in which they were taken.
Sources
In order not to weigh the text down, many references are abbreviated following
the example of: [K1955:8-10] (Kelly, 1955, pp. 8-10). Here is the list of the abbre-
viations and the corresponding references.
[B1979] Bannister, D. (1979). Personal communication. In Neimeyer R. A. (1985), The development
of personal construct psychology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
[BJ2008] Benjafield, J. G. (2008). George Kelly: Cognitive psychologist, humanistic psychologist,
or something else entirely? History of Psychology, 11, 239-262.
[BT2008] Butt, T. (2008). George Kelly: The psychology of personal constructs. Houndmills, UK, Palgrave
Macmillan.
[E2016] Epting, F. R. (2016). George Kelly: A revealing moment. In D. A. Winter & N. Reed
(Eds.), The Wiley handbook of personal construct psychology (pp. 24-33). London: Wiley.
[F1995] Fransella, F. (1995). George Kelly. London: Sage.
[K1955] Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs (Vols. 2). New York: Norton.
[K1960] Kelly, G. A. (1960). Confusion and the clock. Ohio State University. Published in F. Fransella
(Ed.), Personal construct psychology 1977 (pp. 209-232). London: Academic Press, 1978.
[K1963] Kelly, G. A. (1963). The autobiography of a theory. In B. A. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychol-
ogy and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp. 46-65). New York: Wiley, 1969.
[K1965] Kelly, G. A. (1965). The psychotherapeutic relationship. In B. A. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psy-
chology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp. 216-223), New York: Wiley, 1969.
[L2011] Landfield. A. (2011). Going to Ohio State and to George A. Kelly. Personal Construct Theory
& Practice, 8, 11-16.
[N1985] Neimeyer, R. A. (1985). The development of personal construct psychology. Lincoln, NE: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press.
[NJ1997] Neimeyer, R. A., & Jackson, T. T. (1997). George A. Kelly and the development of
personal construct theory. In W. G. Bringmann, H. E. Lück, R. Miller & C. E. Early (Eds.), A picto-
rial history of psychology (pp. 364-372). Chicago: Quintessence.
[S1977] Sechrest, L. (1977). Personal construct theory. In R. J. Corsini (Ed.), Current personality
theories (pp. 203-242). Itasca, IL: Peacock.
[SB1991] Stewart, A. E., & Barry, J. R. (1991). Origins of George Kelly's constructivism in the
work of Korzybski and Moreno. International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 4, 121-136.
[SB1979] Stringer, P., & Bannister, D. (1979). Introduction. In P. Stringer & D. Bannister (Eds.),
Constructs of sociality and individuality (pp. xiii-xvii). London: Academic Press.
[ZJ1983] Zelhart, P., & Jackson, T. T. (1983). George A. Kelly, 1931-1943: Environmental influ-
ences on a developing theorist. In J. R. Adams-Webber & J. C. Mancuso (Eds.), Applications of
personal construct theory (pp. 137-154). Toronto: Academic Press.
iv
C HAPTER 1

George A. Kelly, the

person

Personal Construct Theory (PCT) – a theory of personal-

ity with particular application to psychotherapy – has
been elaborated around the middle of the XXth century
by a man born near Perth, Kansas: George Alexander
Kelly (April 28, 1905 - March 6, 1967).
A portrait of George A. Kelly taken while he was in the midst of teaching one of his seminars
This book is a tribute to his person and his work. (information provided by Jacqueline Kelly Aldridge).

From Maher, 1969, Ralph Norman photographer.
S ECTION 1 Theodore Kelly had studied at
the first and most famous centers

Early life of George A.

of Presbyterian education in the
USA. Parsons College is a now de-
funct private liberal arts college

Kelly
l o c a t e d i n Fa i r fie l d , I o w a .
Founded in 1875 with 34 stu-
dents, the teachers were three
Presbyterian ministers. McCor-
mick Theological Seminary was born
View of Parsons College ca. 1890 in Fairfield, Iowa. in a log cabin in Indiana in 1829
with a handful of students, and
relocated to Chicago at the begin-
ning of the Civil War. The Princeton Theological Seminary was founded in New Jersey
in 1812 and very quickly became
one of the largest seminaries as-
What better than to let Kelly him- sociated with the Presbyterian
self narrate the story of his in- Church.
fancy and childhood?
Kelly tells that after his marriage
I was born in a farm near Perth, Theodore abandoned his career
Kansas, on April 28 1905, the only as a minister and moved to the
child of Theodore Vincent Kelly
and Elfleda Merriam Kelly. My fa- farm in Kansas where George
ther had been educated for the was born: a terrible leap from the
Presbyterian ministry at Parsons solemn halls of prestigious col-
College and at McCormick and
leges and churches to the dusty The McCormick Theological Seminary, North Hal-
Princeton Seminaries. My mother
Pioneers moving to the far west. sted St., Chicago.
had been born on Barbados in the and desolate prairies of the
British West Indies where her fa- American midwest.
ther had taken his family after steam had
The autobiographical sketches in this section are driven his sailing ship out of the North At-
When George was four years old his father explored a new adventure.
taken from Fay Fransella’s George Kelly (Sage, lantic trade. Later Captain Merriam had
1995). become an Indian agent in South Dakota
and it was at the border town of Brown’s In 1909 my father converted our lumber wagon into a covered wagon and moved the
Valley, Minnesota that my parents had met. family to Eastern Colorado to take up a claim on some of the last free land offered set-
Not long after their marriage the career in the ministry was abandoned and the young tlers in the west. The venture failed because no water could be found under the land,
couple moved to the farm where I was born. [F1995:5] and my parents moved back to the farm in Kansas. [F1995:5-6]

The above sketches are sufficient for imagining a piece of the history of American
pioneers; and Kelly’s pioneering background pervades all his theory. As Miller
Mair writes:
You can almost hear the “wagons trains rolling westward,” seeking new pastures and more space
for living, as you read Kelly’s writings. [cited in N1985:11]
Another important adult in George’s world was probably his maternal grandfa-
ther, a Nova Scotian captain on a sailing ship who was driven off the North Atlan-
tic Trade routes upon the arrival of steamships. On one trip Captain Merriam took
his family with him on a multi port trading trip. After they left Rio de Janeiro sail-
ing north, they passed by the beautiful island of Barbados and Kelly’s grand-
mother convinced her husband to stop there for two weeks. During this time,
Kelly’s mother was born. Later, we find Captain Merriam living at Browns Valley,

2

A sailing ship powered by steam in the 1800s.
to the confined Indian reservations. No sur-
prise if in his paper “Confusion and the
Clock”, written shortly after he had had a
heart attack, George Kelly writes:
And I thought of our first grandchild, expected in a
few weeks, whom I might never see, and to whom I
might never tell the wonderful stories that all grand-
children should hear. [K1960]
Let us now come back to Perth, an incorpo-
rated community in Sumner County, “The
Wheat Capital of the World”, whose county
seat is Wellington. On Google Maps you can-
not locate Perth; you can hardly find S. Perth
Rd, going from the border with Oklahoma to
Indian chiefs and US officials.
Minnesota, serving as an Indian
agent in South Dakota (Indian
agents were individuals author-
ized to interact with Indian tribes
on behalf of the U.S. govern-
ment). Browns Valley was settled
in 1867 just at the border with
South Dakota, and was inhabited
by a few dozen people. In his case,
a leap from the boundless ocean
Map of the Island of Barbadoes, for
the History of the West Indies by
Bryan Edwards (1794).
the west of Wellington Lake.
Don Bannister, the British psycholo-
gist who together with Fay Fran-
sella contributed to the spreading of
personal construct theor y in
Europe, describes his attempt to
visit Perth in the following way.
I took a 200-mile detour to visit Perth,
Kansas, and I’m not actually sure I visited
it. Because the signpost said, “Perth 7
miles”. So I set the odometer on the car
and I was in the middle of this vast kind of billiard table. And I passed a cemetery that had quite a
few gravestones in it, so there must have been something there at some time, but it had long
gone. There was a farm in the distance, and I passed about four more en route. But in England we
just never see that amount of space with nothing much in it... Somebody had been telling me
about Sartre, and they were telling me
he grew up in Paris, and he looked out
over the vast view of roofs, and houses,
and tenements, and people crowded in
piles. And I did suddenly get a sense of
contrast, that, stuck out there on a farm
in Kansas, if you didn’t imagine some-
thing, then there wouldn’t be much
there. You’d have to make something
out of it... [Kelly] grew up on the kind
of Kansas farm where you invent every-
thing you need. And he carried that
over. [B1979:11]
Broadway St., Browns Valley Minnesota, 1909.

Lakenswoods.com Postcard Collection
The town of Perth located in
south central Sumner County
was a shipping point for live-
stock on the Rock Island Railroad. In such a land the distances between farms,
ranches and shops were of many miles, and there was no way to attend a school.
“Fortunately Kelly’s father had brought an extensive library of books with him to
the farm, and Jackie [Kelly’s daughter] remembers her father saying that the great-
est gift his father ever gave him was his library” [E2016:27].
Kelly tells:
My schooling was rather irregular and in Colorado was limited to the occasions when
my parents could spend a few weeks in town. However, since they themselves were edu-
cated, they took seriously their responsibility for my studies at home. [F1995:6].
The situation was not very differ-
ent when George reached the age
for attending a high school. “He
even put together the chassis of
an old car in order to drive to a
nearby school. When the vehicle
proved unreliable, he convinced
his family to let him leave home
in 1918 at age 13 and move to
the ‘big city’ of Wichita, Kansas,
to live with his uncle’s family”
[E2016:27].
The Princeton Seminary in the 1800s.
3
 The Friends University is a Chris-
tian University of Quaker heri-
tage, donated in 1898 to the Re-
ligious Society of Friends (Quak-
ers). Quaker settlements began
to appear in the Great Plains in
Kansas in the 1850s when fami-
lies moved together from Quaker
communities in Indiana and
Iowa. Lured by the prospect of
choice land, they were also moti- The Friends University, Wichita.

Source: www.epodunk.com
vated by benevolent concern for
Native Americans and the oppor-

G ALLERY 1.1 Old images of Sumner County, Kansas

A map dated 1902 showing 4 of the 30 townships of Sumner County, Kansas. Perth is in
the township of Downs, quadrant down left.

From http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kssumntp/township.htm

My high school education was about as badly mixed up as my elentary schooling had
been. After a few weeks commuting to a local high school it was decided to send me to
Wichita. Thus it was that I lived away from home most of the time after I was thirteen,
and I attended four different high schools. [F1995:6]

In 1920 Wichita had a population of 72,217, entering the top 100 largest cities in
the United States thanks to the nascent aircraft industry.

Kelly continues the description of his education as follows: Perth, Kansas. Looking East, south side of main street from railroad tracks.

When I was sixteen I transferred to the Friends University academy in Wichita and be- Date: between 1890 and 1920. Source: www.kansasmemory.org
gan taking a combination of college and academy courses. Thus it was that I did not ac-
tually graduate from high school. A fact that is sometimes hard to explain. [F1995:7]

4
 Kelly concludes:
G ALLERY 1.2 Old images of Wichita, Kansas
In 1926, after three
years at Friends Uni-
versity and one at
Park College, Mis-
souri, I completed
my baccalaureate
studies with majors
in physics and
mathematics.
[F1995:7]

According to Fran-
sella, Kelly’s study
of physics and
mathematics had a
profound influence Kansas Yearly Meeting (Quakers), Christian Endeavor Summer
Conference, Friends University, Wichita, Kansas, 1922.

on the generation Source: transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons
of personal
construct theory.

Wichita High School.

Date: between 1900 and 1910. Source: www.kansasmemory.org

tunity of voting against slavery in this newly opened territory.

While at Friends’, Kelly made his first friends and started to read John Dewey’s
version of American pragmatism [E2016:27]. “It was also at Friends that he was
exposed to the Quaker ideas of world peace” [E2016:28]. As evidence of this, he
was awarded first prize in the Peace Oratorical Contest held there in 1924. His
speech was titled “The sincere motive” and the topic was on war. During the same
period he wrote a novel, “Call to arms” (1926), and two essays, “Forgotten is-
sues” (1925) and “A plan for socializing Friends University with respect to stu-
dent participation in school control” (1927).

Park College, Parkville, Missouri. Source: Pinterest.

5
G ALLERY 1.3 The Talisman, Yearbook of the Friends Univer- G ALLERY 1.4 The Narva, Yearbook of Park College, MO
sity, KS

The team of the debate season 1924 was the greatest in the history of the school. George Kelly in the Class of 1926 (the first bottom-left).

6
APPENDIX 1: G ALLERY 1.1: Old images of Sumner County, Kansas
Source: www.kansasmemory.org

Perth, Kansas Looking East, south side of main street from railroad tracks. The town of Perth lo-
cated in south central Sumner County was a shipping point for livestock on the Rock Island
Railroad.Date: Between 1890 and 1920.
Perth, Kansas. View of the business district in Perth, Kansas, showing several stores and a hotel,
including a drug store. The photo shows the south side of Main Street looking west. The town of
Perth, located in south central Sumner County, was a shipping point for livestock on the Rock Is-
land Railroad.Date: Between 1890 and 1920.

Cowboys gathered for a round-up at the 101 ranch south of Hunnewell, Kansas. Date: Between
1870 and 1898.
Foltz home in South Haven, Kansas. Date: Between 1910 and 1920.
APPENDIX 2: G ALLERY 1.2: Old images of Wichita, Kansas
Source: www.kansasmemory.org

View of band members (four of whom have band instruments and are facing the others who are
striking anvils) playing the "Anvil Chorus" on the Morton Simmons Hardware Company float in the
1909 Flower Parade in Wichita, Kansas. Date: 1909.

Wichita High School. Date: between 1900 and 1910

This black and white photograph showing people standing on the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific
Railroad depot platform at Wichita, Kansas.Date: 1910.
 A photograph of Union Station at Wichita, Kansas. The station was operated by the Wichita Union
Terminal Company, and it was used by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad; St. Louis-San
Francisco Railway; and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. Date: Between 1914 and 1921.

View of the Wichita Beacon Building after it opened on January 2, 1911. It was the first sky-
scraper in Kansas. Date: 1911.

A color postcard showing an interior view of the waiting room at the Union Station depot in
Wichita, Kansas. Date: 1914
APPENDIX 3: G ALLERY 1.3: The Talisman, Yearbook of the Friends Uni-
versity, KS, 1924

The team of the debate season 1924 was the greatest in the history of the school. George Kelly is the second from left.
And Kelly won also the Peace oratorical contest... ... with the oration “The Sincere Motive”. The first prize was $15.
APPENDIX 4: G ALLERY 1.4: The Narva, Yearbook of Park College,
MO, 1926

George Kelly in the Class of 1926 (the first bottom-left). George Kelly in the Class of 1926 (the second top-left).
The Schedule of Debates.
 His interest in drama will have
S ECTION 2 a central place in his later pro-

The Postgraduate Years

posal of a personal construct
psychotherapy, where role play
and enactment have a major
part, as well as being central in
the specific method of “fixed
role therapy”. In the meantime,
it allowed Kelly to meet his fu-
ture wife, Gladys Thompson.

Gladys was born April 27,

1906, in Sioux City, Iowa, his-
torically inhabited by Yankton
Sioux. It was there that Gladys
grew up and attended the Morn-
After his baccalaureate in physics and mathematics, George, twenty-one years old, ingside College. Upon gradua-
makes a choice which directs him towards the human sciences. tion in 1926, she moved to Shel-
don, where she taught high
My plan had always been to complete an engineering course after graduating from school English and drama. The
college, but an interest and some success in intercollegiate debate aroused my interest common passion for drama al- The Royal Theater, Kansas City, 1927.

in social issues and made me question the ultimate value of a career in engineering. The Source: provided to Wikimedia Commons by the National
next fall therefore I enrolled in educational sociology at the University of Kansas, with lowed them to know and love Archives and Records Administration
minor studies in labor relations and sociology. My master’s thesis was a study of each other.
Kansas City workers’ distribution of leisure time activities. [F1995:8]
Kelly’s job at the Sheldon Junior College was short lived:
So Kelly got his MA in 1927 with a thesis titled “One thousand workers and their
leisure”. But these are hard times for him, looking for a job in order to finance his After a year and a
studies: half there, a summer
in sociology at the
University of Minne-
In the fall of 1927, with my thesis still incompleted and no offers of a teaching job, in
sota, and a few
spite of many applications, I went to Minneapolis. There I managed to survive by teach-
months as an aero-
ing one night a week in each of three night-schools: one for the American Bankers Asso-
nautical engineer for
ciation, one a speech class for labor organizers, and one an Americanization class for
the struggling Wat-
prospective citizens. I enrolled in the University of Minnesota in sociology and biomet-
kins Aircraft Com-
rics, but after several weeks it was discovered that I had been unable to pay my fees
pany back in Wich-
and I was told that I could no longer attend. [F1995:8] ita, responsible for
stress analysis, I
In the late winter of 1927-28 I was given a job teaching psychology and speech, includ- went to Edinburgh
ing the coaching of dramatics, in the Sheldon Junior College at Sheldon, Iowa. The on an exchange fel-
college, then in its second year, had had disciplinary problems and the previous teacher lowship. [F1995:8]
had been run out of town by the rowdy students. The superintendent of schools appar-
ently decided that academic qualifications were of secondary importance and employed
me. [F1995:8] The report to the
U.S. Bureau of Aero-
Postcard view of Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa, 1910s.

nautics written in Source: Wikimedia Commons

7
1929 titled “Fuselage stress analysis and design specifications for Skylark Model
I”, in support of an application for a manufacturing license for the Watkins Air-
craft Plant in Wichita, is evidence of Kelly’s temporary reversion to work as an
engineer.
Equally it shows that long before the publication of
construct theory Kelly knew well that he, like the rest
of us, was in the interpretation business and he vigor-
ously rejected the notion that we are truly designating
“realities”. [SB1979:2]

It was in Edinburgh that George and Gladys

Kelly received his second bachelor’s degree (this time in education) in 1930 as an
exchange scholar at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, studying for a year
under Sir Godfrey Thomson, an English educational psychologist known as a criti-
cal pioneer in intelligence research. Thomson gave Kelly a statistical training. His
thesis, “Prediction of teaching success”, has never been found, but its search al-
lowed the discovery of an unknown writing of his. As Don Bannister tells,
Some years after Kelly’s death an American
psychologist, William Perry, devoted part of a
year of world travel to a visit to Scotland to try
and locate Kelly’s Edinburgh thesis. He never
found the thesis but by dint of archeological
shrewdness, perseverance and good fortune
he found, beneath the dust piles of an Edin-
burgh library cellar, a paper by George Kelly
clipped to a letter to Sir Godfrey Thomson
asking him to draw the attention of Cyril Burt
to the work. [SB1979:1]
Sir Cyril Burt was also an educational
psychologist, known for his studies on
the heritability of IQ. Unfortunately,
shortly after his death his studies
came into disrepute after evidence
emerged indicating he had falsified
research data.
The paper, “Social Inheritance”, was
Sir Godfrey H. Thomson (1881-1955). published in 1979 in the book Con-
structs of Sociality and Individuality ed-
ited by P. Stringer and D. Bannister. In
his foreword to the paper Bannister writes:
Certainly in its style the paper is unmistakably George Kelly. It exemplifies that relaxed irreverence
which marked much of Kelly’s writing. Consider the statement
“a cultured man was one whose mental faculties were scrubbed and burnished until they reflected
without the distorsion of originality all the abstractions of the day. A man so reflected is still con-
sidered by some to be a cultured man.”
got engaged.
In 1931, back in America, Kelly finally en-
tered psychology by completing a Ph.D. on
aphasia and its physiological psychological
accounts, “Common factors in reading and
speech disabilities”, at the State University of
Iowa. After a single year of study, Kelly re-
ceived the Ph.D. from the hands of Carl Sea-
shore, Dean of the Graduate College of the
University of Iowa and chairman of the Psy-
chology Department, known for his studies
in speech-language pathology and music edu-
cation. Seashore had been Kelly’s mentor,
even though he assigned Kelly to another
Carl Emil Seashore (1866-1949).
Sir Cyril Burt (1883-1971) in 1930.
member of the faculty, Lee Edward
Travis, a pioneering experimental-
physiological psychologist and speech
pathologist. According to Franz Epting
– who had the opportunity to study
with Kelly at the Ohio State University
as a graduate student – “Kelly styled his
way of being a professional person on
his mentor, a very dignified man with a
formidable presence” [E2016:25], but
also Travis had a lot to offer Kelly as he
undertook his dissertation research
and, according to Epting, he too had a
significant role to play.
On June 3rd, two days after receiving
his Ph.D., George Kelly and Gladys
Thompson were married.
Having completed his Ph.D., Kelly regis-
tered with a placement agency in Chi-

8
 cago, and the agency referred him to a small,
public college in the western half of his home
state – Fort Hays Kansas State College. At
long last he had obtained his first job as a
teacher in psychology, as he himself tells:

In the fall of 1931 we set out for Hays, Kansas to

Lee Edward Travis (1896-1987)
teach in the Fort Hays Kansas State College for
what was to stretch out into twelve years. It
was here that I found there was little occasion
to pursue work in physiological psychology and
I turned to the kind of psychological services
that seemed to be most needed. This was clini-
cal psychology, especially in the schools of the
State. Soon we received some legislative sup-
port for a program of traveling clinics that gave
my students and me a chance to develop our
psychological thinking in close contact with per-
sons in distress. [F1995:9]

So, Kelly’s early interest was for physiological psychology - a discipline that his
later theory will regard as an hybrid from the epistemological standpoint of con-
structive alternativism. It is due to the difficult economic situation of the region in
that period that Kelly saw the need to turn to clinical psychology.

George Kelly’s wedding photo, June 3, 1931, one day after his wedding and two days after he
received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.
By kind courtesy of Jacqueline Kelly Aldridge

9
 In 1931, the school was only 29 years
S ECTION 3 old, and although liberal arts curricula
and degrees were first offered in 1933,

The Professional Years

the college was, and would continue for
many years to be, a “teachers’ college.”
The graduate program in psychology,
along with several others, had been
established in 1929. With the addition
of Kelly, the Department of Psychology
had three faculty members. Homer
Blosser Reed was chairman. [...] We
can find no evidence that Reed contrib-
uted to Kelly’s clinical activities, re-
search, or theory. On the contrary, their
Fort Hays first classroom. relationship appears not to have been
either personally or professionally
close. [ZJ1983:137-138]

T HE Y EARS AT F ORT H AYS K ANSAS S TATE C OLLEGE
Fort Hays, in Western Kansas, had been a frontier military outpost that was
closed in 1889. A well documented essay about the environmental influences on
Kelly’s ideas reports:
The public knows Kansas as that flat, treeless country of wheat farms that served as Dorothy’s
point of departure for her trip to Oz. Western Kansas is like that. It is a huge, sparsely populated
area – it is now, and it was in the 1930s. The city of Hays had 4770 residents in 1931. [...] Fort
Hays State University was and is the only public institution of higher education in an area that is
250 miles east to west and 225 miles north to south. Fort Hays State was and is a geographically
isolated educational institution with
the expressed mission of serving the
people of that large geographic region.
[...] George Kelly did a great deal to
h e l p e s t a b l i s h t h e ex p e c t a t i o n .
[ZJ1983:139]
As to the College, it had just
taken its name in 1931, being
formerly the Western State Nor-
mal School since 1902, and the
Kansas State Teachers College of
Hays since 1923. It will be ele-
vated to University status only in
Picken Hall, the oldest building on the Fort Hays
State College campus, early 1900s. 1977.
We have a detailed description of Kelly’s work in the first years at Fort Hays:
Shortly after his arrival at Fort Hays State University, Kelly appears to have staked out the clinical
area of the department as his own. [...] Kelly’s clinical training program and clinics grew out of a
class project begun in an adolescent psychology course that was taught in the fall of 1931. The
class project involved examination of an exceptional child who was enrolled in the college grade
school. This experience led to the opening of the psychology clinic, which was free and open to
anyone who required diagnostic, therapeutic, or assessment services. By the spring of 1934, the
clinic had served 167 clients. Of those clients, 50 had received therapy; 67 had received diagnostic
services, and 50 had received educational testing services. [ZJ1983:140]
The therapeutic orientation of the clinic, according to a description in Kelly’s un-
published manuscript Handbook of Clinic Practice written in 1936, included four
types of methods: direct (reme-
dial academic training, motor
training, and speech therapy),
diversional (systematization of
the patient’s daily program, di-
version of thought to noncathar-
tic ideas, and occupational ther-
apy), suggestive (reassurance
and countersuggestion), and ca-
thartic (activity therapy, pure ca-
tharsis, psychoanalysis, and
child psychoanalysis).
In the fall of 1933 Kelly began
The 1940 movie directed by John Ford based on
his traveling clinics. Butt de-
John Steinbeck’s drama published in 1939.

10
scribes the experience as follows:
His work entailed providing a psychological service for the schools in western Kansas. This was a
huge area that he covered in a travelling clinic, along with his few students. These were pioneering
days in psychology, and Kelly was used to the pioneering attitude - his own family had been one of
the last to move west in a covered wagon. Guidelines and job descriptions were not prescribed like
they are today. His work developed into what he later described as the ‘heart-breaking tasks of the
psychotherapist’ with both children and
adults. Heartbreaking it would surely
have been. The USA was in the grip of the
Great Depression that had followed the
collapse of the stock markets in 1929.
Kansas itself was soon to became what
was to be called a ‘dustbowl’. Intensive
farming and the changes in the landscape
it involved resulted in the winds tearing
away the topsoil in which crops grew. The
droughts of the early 1930s exacerbated
the situation. The agriculture on which
the local economy was based collapsed.
There were no health or social security
safety nets. Starvation and poverty were
everywhere. This was the background for
Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath drama.
[BT2008:7-8]
But what kind of psychotherapy
had Kelly to offer to his wretched
clients?
We know from his “The autobiog-
Clark L. Hull (1884-1952), the behaviourist psy-
chologist most quoted by Kelly. raphy of a theory” what had been
his feelings when he first met the
two main theoretical alternatives
in the psychology of the 1930s: behaviourism and psychoanalysis.
In the first course in psychology that I took I sat in the back row of a very large class, tilted my
chair against the wall, made myself as comfortable as possible, and kept one ear cocked for any-
thing interesting that might turn up. One day the professor, a very nice person who seemed to be
trying hard to convince himself that psychology was something to be taken seriously, turned to the
blackboard and wrote an “S,” an arrow, and an “R.” Thereupon I straightened up my chair and lis-
tened, thinking to myself that now, after two or three weeks of preliminaries, we might be getting
to the meat of the matter. Although I listened intently for several sessions after that the most I
could made of it was that the “s” was what you had to have in order to account for the “R” and the
“R” was put there so the “S” would have something to account for. I never did find out what that
arrow stood for – not to this day – and I have pretty well given up trying to figure it out. I can see,
of course, that once you step into this solipsism you can go round and round without feeling obli-
gated to come out with anything useful. [K1963:46-47]
On the other hand, Kelly’s encounter with psychoanalysis was not much more sat-
isfying:
About three years later, after I had abandoned
engineering as a career and had entered gradu-
ate school in an effort to learn something
about sociology and labor relations, I decided
it was high time I had a look at Freud. I can
remember the occasion rather well. I was in
the northeast corner of the reading room of
the library at the University of Kansas. I don’t
remember which one of Freud’s books I was
trying to read, but I do remember the mount-
ing feeling of incredulity that anyone could
write such nonsense, much less publish it. It
was not the pan-sexualism that makes Freud
objectionable to some new readers, but the
elastic meanings and arbitrary syntax that dis-
turbed me. If I had any misgivings about hav-
ing abandoned psychology so readily after my
first encounters, I had very few regrets after
reading Freud that day. [K1963:47]
Some years later Kelly caricatured the
two approaches as “push and pull theo-
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
ries of motivation”. They share the be-
lief that the person is determined by
some force or another: pushed by deep forces according to psychoanalysis, pulled
by this or that force in the environment in behaviourism. In contrast to both,
Kelly claimed that personal construct theory “was about the jackass in the mid-
dle”.
Anyway, while trying to imagine a way to give help to his clients, Kelly went back
to Freud for a second look.
My recollections of Rasmussen’s Principal Nervous Pathways and of Thorndike’s electrical condenser
theory of learning applied at the synapses had not proved very helpful to people troubled about
what was to become of them. But now that I had listened to the language of distress, Freud’s writ-
ings made a new kind of sense. That fellow Freud, he was indeed a clinician! He too must have
listened to these same cries echoing from deep down where there are no sentences, no words, and
no syntax. So it was that I became a “Freudian,” if not by training, at least by persuasion.
[K1963:50-51]
So, a sort of “wild psychoanalysis” was the main therapeutic tool in the clinical
activities carried out by Kelly and his students at least until the late 1930s.
11
 The traveling clinics
were designed for the G ALLERY 1.5 Forsyth Library Archives and Special Collec-
diagnosis and the reso- tions, Fort Hays State University
lution of the problems
of school children.

In retrospect these clinics

were marvels of organiza-
tion and must have taken
considerable boldness and
endurance. A typical sched-
ule for a traveling clinic in-
volved leaving Hays by auto-
mobile at 3:00 A. M. in or-
der to be on site 100 miles
away by 8:00 A. M. The staff
consisted of Kelly and three
to five undergraduates and/
or master’s candidates who
Forsyth Library I and the Science Hall from the columns of were designated to take the
Picken Hall, 1930s. roles of nurse, social worker,
Copyright University Archives, Fort Hays State University psychometrist, etc. Up to 12
cases were seen in a day. For
each case, Kelly would desig-
nate a set of evaluation measures to be administered by his students. While these tests were being
administered, Kelly would give a public lecture followed by a question and answer period. The con-
tent and purpose of these lectures is not yet fully known. After lunch, case conferences were held
until early evening. After dinner, recommendations for remediation were given to parents and
teachers. These recommendations were specific, “practical” suggestions to be carried out in the
child’s environment by his or her caregivers. A unique feature of the clinics was a 2-year follow-up
by mail. [ZJ1983:143-144]

Before students were selected, they

had to be psychology majors who had
made a commitment to get a Ph.D.,
and they were required to enter ther-
apy with Kelly for just a few sessions
up to a semester. Knowledge of psycho-
metric measures (Stanford-Binet Intel-
ligence test in primis) was emphasized,
as well as the reading of about 20 The Old Rarick Hall at Fort Hays Kansas
State College, home of Kelly’s efforts to pro-
books of psychiatry (among them, vide family and school consultation.
Henderson and Gillespie’s Textbook of
Psychiatry) and psychology (such as Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1932.
Adler’s The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology, Fenichel’s Outline of Clinical
Psychoanalysis, and Freud’s New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis). But the basic 1 of 12

12
 teaching document in the clinical program was
the Handbook of Clinic Practice – referred to by
the students as “The Bible” – written by Kelly
in 1936 and continually revised. The book in-
cluded “the Rules” for professional conducts, a
statement of professional ethics, a definition of
psychology in relation to other helping profes-
sions, and detailed procedures to be used in
The house that Kelly himself physi-
cally built for his family in 1939. the traveling clinic, as well as forms to be filled
From
http://www.centrepcp.co.uk/georgekel out in each activity area. The set of ethical
ly.htm statements are said to be very similar to those
currently adopted by the American
Psychological Association. In the preface to The
Psychology of Personal Constructs Kelly acknowledges that his “book started as a hand-
book of clinical procedures. It was designed for the writer’s students and used as
a guide in the clinic of which he was the director” [K1955:ix].

But Kelly soon began to be uncomfortable with psychoanalysis:

It was not that they were failing me so much as it was that I felt myself beginning to take them for
granted. And ideas, like women, when too long taken for granted are likely to turn fickle.
So I began fabricating “insights.” I deliberately offered “preposterous interpretations” to my cli-
ents. Some of them were about as unFreudian as I could make them-first proposed somewhat cau-
tiously, of course, and then, as I began to see what was happening, more boldly. My only criteria
were that the explanation account for the crucial facts as the client saw them and that it carry im-
plications for approaching the future in a different
way. [K1963:52]

Here is the germ of the theory he developed

in the following years.

Apart from the handbook written in 1936 re-

garded by Kelly himself as the embryo of
personal construct theory, his twelve years
stay left their mark on Fort Hays Kansas The history of the “Kelly Center” at FHSU.

From https://www.fhsu.edu/kellycenter/Kelly-Center-Name-History/

State College.

By 1936 more than 20 clinics a year were be- in psychology at Fort Hays, 21 master’s degrees were awarded. Of those, Kelly su-
ing held, and a satellite system of four or five pervised 15. Two of them (Edwards, 1943; Robinson, 1940) concern the develop-
“permanent” branch clinics throughout ment of a new technique, role therapy, which will be developed later as fixed-role
Kansas was established in the period 1936- therapy.
1937.
The last picture of Kelly at FHKSC.

From Reveille 1943.
In the first 20 years of the graduate program

13
Finally, as evidence of the fact that Kelly left his mark, Fort Hays State University
is still offering a “Support Services for Students, Faculty and Staff” named Kelly
P ICTURES OF G EORGE A. K ELLY FROM R EVEILLE ,
Center, heir of the Psychological Service Center founded by Kelly in 1932. THE Y EARBOOK OF F ORT H AYS K ANSAS S TATE C OLLEGE
Kelly remained at Fort Hays Kansas State College until 1943, when he joined the
Navy during World War II.

Reveille 1935. An experiment with a rat maze conducted with H. B. Reed.

Reveille 1932, 1933, 1934

Reveille 1936, 1939, 1940

Reveille 1937. Delta Epsilon, the honorary fraternity for the purpose of recognizing outstandi-
ing achievements in the field of science. (Kelly is the fourth from left).
Reveille 1938 Reveille 1942

14
T HE Y EARS OF W ORLD W AR II AND THE U NIVERSITY
OF M ARYLAND

The Yearbook of Fort Hays State College of 1943 (Gallery 1.5, Fig. 11) clearly testi-
fies Kelly’s involvement in the participation of the United States in the World War
II. Kelly writes:

War clouds began to appear on the horizon in the late thirties and I was put in charge of
the flight training program allocated to the college by the Civil Aeronautics Administra-
tion and I undertook to learn to fly myself. In the fall of 1943 I was commissioned in the
U.S. Naval reserve and stationed in the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. [F1995:11]

Kelly joined one of several groups of naval air psychologists working on methods
for the selection of cadets. In November of 1943 he went to the Bureau of Medi-
cine and Surgery of the Navy in Washington DC as a lieutenant, and remained in
the Aviation Psychology Branch until 1945. The list of publications between 1944
and 1946 demonstrates the range of his interests. Some of his work has to do
with selection and training, but also concerned computers and instrument panels,
an heritage of his early formation in engineering.

He spent five years in the services. In 1944 he obtained an associate professorship

at the University of Maryland, where he stayed only one year. In 1946 he accepted
the offer for a full professorhip and directorship of the Clinical Psychology pro-
gram at the Ohio State University in Columbus, where he remained for nineteen
years.

University of Maryland, College of Arts and Sciences.
 George A. Kelly wearing the uniform of the U.S. Navy, 1944.
From The Terrapin: Yearbook of the University of Maryland, 1946, p. 13 By kind courtesy of Jacqueline Kelly Aldridge

15
T HE Y EARS AT THE O HIO S TATE U NIVERSITY

When Kelly was appointed Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Ohio State Uni-
versity in Columbus, Carl R. Rogers had just left the same chair having been in-
vited to set up a counseling center at the University of Chicago. The names of
Kelly and Rogers are often associated for their phenomenological approaches, for
some affinities in their views of the therapeutic relationship, and for having been
acknowledged as the founders of
modern clinical psychology. The
needs of veterans returning from
World War II and the generous
government fundings favoured
the growth of trainings in clinical
psychology. During that period
another psychologist who con-
tributed to clinical psychology is The Ohio State University’s Armory and Gymnasium, damaged by fire in 1958 and demol-
ished in 1959.

Victor Raimy (1913-1987), who From https://www.flickr.com/photos/mytravelphotos/4248147371. Creative Commons BY-NC-ND
2.0
graduated at Ohio State Univer-
sity in 1943 and was appointed
Professor at the Department of Fransella [F1995] writes
Psychology of OSU during the that it is difficult to
same year as Kelly. Incidentally, know precisely when
Rogers was one of the reviewers Kelly started work on
of Kelly’s magnum opus (the other the book, but it seems
being Jerome Bruner), where it must have been some
both Rogers and Raimy are time in the 1930s,
quoted as representatives of the when in Fort Hays
Carl R. Rogers (1902-1987), ca. 1947. neophenomenological approach. Kansas State College.
Kelly told Fransella that
During the first years at the
it would be the only
OSU, Kelly wrote several manuscripts and conference addresses, mostly on the
one of the five books he
training in clinical psychology. In 1951 he presented an address at the U. S. Veter-
had written to be pub-
ans Administration Hospital in Houston, TX, titled The psychology of personal con-
lished, and that that
structs, probably the first presentation of the theory he was elaborating in those
must have been a mis-
years and which will be published in 1955. His two-volume book was finished in
take! Brendan Maher,
1953 and shipped off to the publishers when Kelly took his first sabbatical leave
one of Kelly’s first stu-
from Ohio State for a visiting appointment at Montclear State Teachers’ College in
dents in OSU who will
New Jersey to work on the use of television in classroom instruction [E2016:29].
edit a collection of se-
lected papers published University Hall, ca. 1946.

From Makio Yearbook, 1946, p. 10

16
by Wiley in 1969, Clinical Psychology and Personality: The Selected Papers of George Kelly,
recalls: G ALLERY 1.6 The Ohio State University Bulletin
As far as I can tell George did not contact any publisher at all, and at times it seemed as though
the manuscript was something between a possible book and a very long working paper. When it
was finally finished, it was typed up on the purple-inked ‘ditto’ paper that was then used to make
copies. Twelve copies were made, packaged and addressed to leading publishers (without any ad-
vance warning to them, I believe) and taken to the Post Office by George and some students in
George’s station-wagon.
Not long after that I happened to have an appointment with him about something. When I entered
his office he was sitting at his desk looking genuinely amazed, and pleased. Some publisher’s con-
tracts lay on his desk. Not only was the book going to be published - he had a choice of publishers.
He expressed his delight, and his surprise, and I do suspect that if the book had been rejected by
all twelve, he would not
have been entirely sur-
prised.
In George’s career there
was something of the
triumph of the tortoise
over the hare. For a
long time few people
outside professional
clinical psychology
knew of his work. He
had published few arti-
cles, and was not a regu-
lar performer at conven-
tions and conferences. I
think that the response
to George’s book came
as a surprise to some of
Brendan A. Maher (1924-2009). From his colleagues as well as
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/10/brendan-arnold-maher/ t o G e o r g e h i m s e l f.
[F1995:12]

After the publication of The Psychology of Personal Constructs and its recognition as a
major development in the study of personality and psychotherapy, Kelly received
many invitations to teach and lecture at universities all over the world. He held
visiting appointments at the Southern Illinois University (1956), Syracuse Univer-
sity (1957), University of California (1959), Harvard University (1960), Univer-
sity of Nebraska (1962), Temple University (1962), Princeton University (1962),
University of Houston (1965), University of Chicago (1965), and many more; he
lectured at many other institutions in the United States, as well as in Europe (Co-
penhagen, 1961; London, 1964), the former Soviet Union (Moscow, 1961), South
America and the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, 1959), and Asia. In a brief biographical The Seventy-Seventh Annual Report of the President of the Ohio State University to the Board
sketch written in 1966 Kelly writes: of Trustees, the Governor, and Citizens of Ohio, September 1948.

During the year 1960-61 my wife and I traveled around the world on a project financed by the Hu-
man Ecology Fund in an effort to apply the construct theory to certain international problems. Dur-

17
ing this trip I lectured in London, Oslo, Copenhagen, Louvain, Madrid, Prague, Warsaw, and Mos-
cow.

The trip around the world is described with more details in Europe’s matrix of deci-
sion (1962):
On the morning of June 9th, 1960 my wife and I boarded United Airlines Flight 610 at the spank-
ing new air terminal in Columbus, Ohio. We were about to start a journey that would take us
around the world and bring us face to face with people in 37 countries. My pocket was sagging
with a two-inch-thick packet of tickets that were good for one year, and we were determined not to
miss a single day of the adventure they promised us. The last entry on the last ticket read, “Chi-
cago to Columbus, 5:10 P.M., June 8th, 1961” - we had allowed ourselves only seven hours to spare!

To give an idea of his style of presentation, it is worth quoting the introduction of

the same paper he presented at the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation in 1962:

There is something you all should know at the outset of this paper: I have no use for the concept
of motivation. Professor Jones was well aware of this last summer when he invited me to come
here. We were having coffee together in Copenhagen–at least I remember it as coffee, although Dr.
Jones says it was tea. I believe our wives were with us at the time. He doesn't remember that ei-
ther. At any rate, he remembers that he invited me to come here. At the time, we both found the

The house in 171 Medick Way, Worthington, Ohio, where the Kelly family lived from 1956 to
1965. By kind courtesy of Jörn Scheer

idea of my having to talk in public about motivation highly amusing. He probably still thinks it is
funny, but, after the toil of preparing this paper, I am not so sure I still do. Nevertheless, here I
am.

Since that conversation I have pondered on a number of things, including the whimsical possibility
of writing such a convincing paper that you would be moved to change the topic of this annual
Nebraska conclave on "Snakes in Ireland." How much more to the point it would be if the topic
were something like this: "What Is Everybody up to These Days?" or "What in the World Is Man-
kind about To Do to Itself?" or perhaps this one: "Isn't There Any Other Way of Coping with a Prob-
lem Besides Lying Down and Being Treated for It?" A good short title could, I think, be lifted from
Hans Fallada's 1932 novel, Little Man, What Now? "The Nebraska Symposium on What Now"–not
bad!

Notwithstanding this preamble that could have been interpreted as irreverent, the
Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1976 was devoted to Personal Construct Psychol-
ogy, and it is considered by the Kellian community the first international congress
on PCP.

Another sketch of Kelly’s attitude towards psychology comes from the memories
The house in 688 Oxford Street, Worthington, Ohio, where the Kelly family lived from 1946 of Alvin Landfield, who completed his Masters and Doctoral research under his
to 1954. By kind courtesy of Jörn Scheer
direction. Here is how he tells of his first encounter with Kelly.

18
 I knocked on the door of Dr. Kelly's Office. A short, rotund, smiling man with an Irish face greeted
me. “Come in Mr. Landfield, have a seat.” He sat down opposite me and leaned forward. “Mr. Land-
field, what do you think Psychology is all about?” I responded with something about what I had
learned at North Carolina. He swiveled his chair to the window. Then, he swiveled back and
leaned forward. “That is all very interesting. Many Psychologists believe in what you have said.
However, there are other ways to look at all of that.”
The light bulb went on for me. I knew at that moment that I had to know more about this man
and his thinking. [L2011:13]

Three years later, Landfield was given a Graduate Assistantship for two semesters.

First, I was assigned to Dr. Boyd McCandless. He asked me to punch hundreds of IBM cards. The
second semester, I was assigned to Dr. Kelly. When I asked him about my duties, he replied, “Oh,
you might dust my books once in a while.” He smiled.
One afternoon, I was working late in the secretarial office outside Dr. Kelly's office. I was coming
up with some research ideas. I looked up when Dr. Kelly was leaving his office. Impulsively, I asked
him if he could listen for several minutes to a research idea. He agreed to my request and sat on
the edge of my work table. Quickly, I summarized my thoughts. He responded with the following
statement: “Mr. Landfield, I don't follow all that you are saying, but I see the wheels going around.

The room where Kelly’s study was arranged in Medick Way. By kind courtesy of Jörn Scheer

Jack W. Brehm, W. Edgar Vinacke and George A. Kelly, three of the speakers at the Nebraska
Franz Epting in Kelly’s workshop.
 The basement workshop with Kelly's notes. Symposium on Motivation 1962.
By kind courtesy of Jörn Scheer By kind courtesy of Jörn Scheer By permission of the Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

19
What is most important are those wheels going around.” He departed. He could have easily cut
me down and made me feel like an idiot. I have known professors who would delight in having
that kind of opportunity. Kelly supported my intention. Kelly did not give me many words of sup-
port during those years at OSU. However, when he did, his comments made a critical difference in
my life. He always treated me with respect in his formal way. [L2011:13]

Kelly was elected President of the Consulting Division of the American Psychological As-
sociation (APA) in 1954 and of the Clinical Division in the two-year period 1956-57.
He had also served as Vice-President and President of the American Board of Ex-
aminers in Professional Psychology (ABEPP),
later renamed the American Board of Profes-
sional Psychology (ABPP) – the primary organi-
zation for specialty board certification in psy-
chology – of which he was a charter member in
1947.

A heart attack that struck Kelly in August of

1959 at age 54 clouded this period of fame. He
narrates the event and the repercussion on his
family in a paper, Confusion and the clock, he had
begun to write in that period and that he re-
sumed some months later describing in detail
his experience.
A portrait of Kelly recurring in
Russian websites.

A popular photographic portrait of George Kelly while at the Ohio State University.
By kind courtesy of Jacqueline Kelly Aldridge

20
George Kelly together with his wife, Gladys, his son, Joseph Vincent, and his daughter, Jacque-
line. The picture was taken on the Sunday just prior to the Friday in August, 1959, when Kelly
suffered his heart attack. Jacqueline is seven months pregnant and is staying with her folks
while her first husband, George Edward Sharples, was stationed in Korea.
By kind courtesy of Jacqueline Kelly Aldridge

A candid shot showing Kelly with his daughter Jacqueline and his grandson (May
1964).
By kind courtesy of Jacqueline Kelly Aldridge

Jacqueline and her father in a picture taken about the same time (1959).
By kind courtesy of Jacqueline Kelly Aldridge

21
T HE Y EARS AT THE B RANDEIS U NIVERSITY

In September 1965, after a nineteen year period at the Ohio State University, Kelly
moved to Brandeis University, founded in 1948 as a non-sectarian Jewish
community-sponsored private institution in Waltham, Massachusetts, 9 miles
west of Boston. Here, at the invitation of Abraham Maslow, the prominent
humanistic
p s y c h o l o-
gist, Kelly
received a
prestigious
appointment
to the Riklis
Chair of Be-
havioral Sci-
ence. He
took up the Distinguished Professional
Chair in Theoretical Psychology. Kelly
and his wife decided to live at Framing-
ham, a town 12 miles west of the Univer- The grave of George and Gladys Kelly at Walnut Grove Cemetery, Worthington, Ohio.
By kind courtesy of Jörn Scheer
sity.

When in Waltham, he wrote several

manuscripts; among them, A brief introduc-
tion to personal construct theory, published
three times posthumously. Maybe, his
last writing is Experimental dependency, un-
finished.

On March 6, 1967, a month before his

62nd birthday, George A. Kelly passed
away due to complications following a
gall bladder operation. The grave is at
Walnut Grove Cemetery at Worthington,
Ohio, resting close to his wife Gladys,
who died on January 13, 2004, at the Fair-
haven Health Center in Sykesville, Mary- Abraham H. Maslow (1908-1970)
land.

22
APPENDIX 5: G ALLERY 1.1: Reveille, Yearbook of Fort Hays State
College (Source: Forsyth Library Archives and Special Collections, Fort Hays
State University)

Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1933.

Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1932.
Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1934 (Kelly’s surname is at last
amended).
Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1935.
Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1936. Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1937.
Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1938.
Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1939.
 Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1942.
Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1940.
Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1943. Reveille (Yearbook of Fort Hays State College), 1943.
APPENDIX 6: G ALLERY 1.2: The Ohio State University Bulletin
EDUCATION
3,962, an increase of nearly 60 per cent
over the peak enrollment of the pre-
ceding year. This figure gives no fair
picture of the instructional load carried
by schools and departments of the Col-
lege, since it does not include the 1,224
graduate students in education, psychol-
ogy, music, fine arts, and physical edu-
cation. Graduate and undergraduate
students for whose guidance and in-
struction the College took major respon-
sibility in 1946-1947 totaled 5,186.
About fOUI-fifths of those enrolled in
the College were preparing to teach;
the remainder sought degrees in such
fields as fine arts, music, and occupa-
tional therapy. Among the 407 students
graduated by the College, the propor-
tion of prospective teachers was even
higher. There is evidence that the task
of alleviating Ohio's severe teacher short-
age is being accomplished more rap-
idly than anyone had dared to hope, and
that in a few areas (notably history and
the social studies) the next year or two
may see the problem of teacher shortage
converted into one of over-supply. The
College, through its advisory program,
is continuing its efforts to interest ap-
propriate students in those teaching
fields where shortages are still acute.
Department of Education.-The end
of the war brought an influx of gradu-
ate students whose work had been in-
terrupted for periods ranging from one
to five years. In the summer of 1946, 91
persons completed their work for the
Master's degree as compared with 48
in 1945. Indications at the beginning of
the 1947 summer quarter were that
more than 100 students would com-
plete Master's degrees and 10 would
Yr\ complete Ph.D. degrees. Undergradu-
ate enrollments increased in industrial
THE VETERAN MOVES IN . . . arts, elementary education, and the
teaching fields of science, mathematics,
and social studies. There was a sub-
Seventy-Seventh Annual Report of the stantial increase in the number of stu-
dent teachers in elementary education,
social studies, mathematics, and science.
President of the Ohio State University In planning to meet more effectively
to Board of Trustees, the Governor, and Citizens of Ohio
The Seventy-Seventh Annual Report of the President of the Ohio State University Enrollment in the Department of Psychology more than doubled since 1944-45.
to the Board of Trustees, the Governor, and Citizens of Ohio, September 1948.
the needs of the schools of the state, the
Department has expanded its program
and its staff. Twelve new courses have
been approved strengthening the De-
partment's offerings in elementary edu-
cation, philosophy, secondary education,
and the teaching fields of mathematics,
science, English, and social studies. In
response to the request of the State De-
partment of Education, the Department
is planning to enter the fields of trades
and industries education and distribu-
tive education.
For several years, the Department has
offered a minor in library science. The
new regulations of the North Central
Association of Colleges and Secondary
Schools requiring all North Central
schools to have trained librarians be-
ginning with the school year 1952-1953
demand the expansion of the present
minor to a major.
Throughout the year, the Department
in its regular meetings continued its
discussion of general education. The re-
sults of a survey of general education
in the Department's courses will serve
as an important basis for the recon-
struction of our offerings to the end that
teachers and administrators may be bet-
ter prepared for dealing with the re-
sponsibilities of education in the post-
war world.
Special features of the 1946 summer
quarter were a refresher course for
graduate students who had spent one
or more years in the armed services, an
intercultural workshop, a mathematics
workshop, and a reading workshop.
Department of Psychology. - Enroll-
ment in the. Department of Psychology
continued to increase at about the same
rate as during the previous year. E?-
rollment for the year in all courses I.Il
the Department totaled II,959. Tbe
greatest increase was in graduate courses,
where the number of students has more
than trebled since 1944-1945. For the
Department as a whole, enrollment has
more than doubled within this same
period.
 EDUCATION
In the service courses at the 400 level,
enrollmen t for the year totaled 6,473. In
addition, the Department staffed sev-
eral sections of education survey with
teachers of the beginning psychology
courses, so that some freshmen students
in the College of Education could have
continuous contact with the same in-
structor throughout the first year.
The great increase in enrollment in
the elementary service courses was met
by grouping all students in beginning
psychology in a single large lecture sec-
tion which filled an auditorium. This
expedient is obviously undesirable, but
the demand for trained psychologists is
at present so great that it is impossible
to bid successfully for the services of
competent junior staff members in suf-
ficient numbers to permit a more ef-
fective student-teacher ratio. The De-
partment fully recognizes the importance
of changing this situation as quickly
as conditions will permit.
The Department has developed a re-
quired curriculum for Arts College stu-
dents majoring in psychology. It has
also developed an elementary psychology
course specifically designed as an alter-
native in the required biological science
sequence of the Arts College.
. The demand for clinical psychologists
IS tremendous-the Veterans Adminis-
tration alone wants six hundred, and
there are not that many adequately
trained clinical psychologists in the coun-
try. The Department has had ten
trainees in clinical psychology under the
Veterans Administration program and
plans to take about ten more next year,
along with several others under a pro-
gram sponsored by the U. S. Public
Health Service.
The case load in the Psychological
Clinic, the Student Consultation Service,
and the Remedial Aids Center has shown
some incr e·ase. Many veterans come to
these agencies with family problems and
problems of mental adjustment. The
agencies also serve the program of the
Department by furnishing (along with
Communication of the appointment of Professors George A. Kelly and Victor C.
Raimy in the Clinic.
39
the Bureau of Juvenile Research, the
Occupational Opportunities Service, the
collits and the schools) internship facil-
ities for the many graduate students who
are coming to the Department for train-
ing as vocational counselors.
Staff changes at the senior level during
the year included the appointment of
Professors George A. Kelly and Victor
C. Raimy in the Clinic, Professor Delos
O. Wickens in the elementary area, and
Professor Arthur W. Melton in general
psychology.
Aside from the usual research con-
ducted by members of the instructional
staff and by graduate students working
on theses, several major projects deserve
special mention. The research on edu-
cational acceleration has been virtually
completed. Several publications growing
out of this study have attracted national
attention. A project on teaching aids is
in progress for the United States Navy.
A confidential research project in the
field of radar is being conducted for
military authorities. In the Civilian
Aviation Program sponsored by the Na-
tional Research Council an inquiry has
been completed into the question of
whether persons with visual defects can
learn to fiy satisfactorily and a project
is now under way having to do with
stall indicators. Plans have been made
for a comprehensive research project
sponsored by the U. S. Public Health
Service and involving several other insti-
tutions which looks toward the develop-
ment of more effective psychometric
techniques.
School of Fine and Applied /hts .-
The enrollment of 1945-1946, which
seemed the limit of the School's capac-
ities, was exceeded by 1,489 during the
year 1946-1947. This increased load
brought many problems in maintaining
the standards of instruction and in
utilizing scarce space and equipment.
Ten new teachers in various ranks
were employed (one new teacher for
each 150 new students), and Fine Arts
classes were scattered over six different
C HAPTER 2

Personal Construct
Theory

Kelly expounded personal construct theory in his work

in two volumes The Psychology of Personal Constructs, pub-
lished by Norton, New York, in 1955. Volume one
(xviii+556 pages) is titled A Theory of Personality, vol-
ume two (x+661 pages) Clinical Diagnosis and Psychother-
apy.

In 1963 Norton published A Theory of Personality: The

Psychology of Personal Constructs, a paperback edition con-
sisting of the first three chapters of Kelly’s two-
volume work.

The whole book was reprinted by Routledge, in asso-

ciation with the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology,
London, in 1991.
 1954. It is easy to quote the authors of the eight remaining references: J. Benja-
S ECTION 1 mins, J. Bieri, J. F. T. Bugental, O. Fenichel, J. M. Hadley, P. Lecky, C. R. Rogers,

The Book
and J. B. Rotter.

Carl Rogers had left the Ohio State University at the time of Kelly’s arrival, while
Julian Rotter had joined the same faculty in the fall of 1945. Kelly recognizes the
similarities (not disregarding the differences) between personal construct theory
and Rogers’ client-centered approach, as well as with other neophenomenological
systems: Raimy’s self-concept theory, Lecky’s self-consistency theory, and Snygg
and Combs’s phenomenal field approach. However, Kelly maintains that Rogers’
position “has not been stated in terms of a psychological theory, [...] being more
deeply rooted in certain philosophical convictions regarding the nature of man,
and society’s proper relationship to him” [K1955:41]. All things considered, Kelly
borrows from Rogers only the term “client” in place of “patient”. As to Rotter, in
1954 he had published his main work, Social Learning and Clinical Psychology, in
The Psychology of Personal Constructs is the end product of the long-lasting experi-
which he laid out the basic tenets of his social learning theory. However, Kelly
ence of George A. Kelly in the fields of personality and clinical psychology, and its
does not make reference to this theory, but to Rotter’s Incomplete Sentences Test,
writing presumably took many years. Though the work of an only person, Kelly at
“perhaps the least threatening type of projective test in relation to what it reveals
various times acknowledges the contribution of a group of colleagues and stu-
about the client” [K1955:981]. From whom then did Kelly draw inspiration?
dents willing to listen and discuss every Thursday night the first-draft manuscript
that Kelly had written during the week. Here is how Kelly describes this experi-
Even though not listed in the references, there are other philosophers and psy-
ence in the preface of the book:
chologists Kelly gave only passing mention in his book – together with novelists,
This weekly ordeal lasted for three long years. It was painfully stimulating. Attendance ran as high and mythological and biblical fig-
as thirty and pages covered in an evening ran as low as one. That either the writer or the manu- ures.
script survived at all is entirely due to the psychological perceptiveness of colleagues who, some-
how, always found a way to strike a gentle balance between pity and realism. The most quoted is Sigmund Freud
(whose name appears in thirteen
According to his daughter Jacqueline, Gladys was an eager hostess, and enjoyed pages), but of course Kelly mostly
entertaining the Thursday-nighters. Kelly lists the more regular participants: James distances himself from the Viennese
Bieri, Jean Burton, Richard B. Cravens, Robert E. Fager, Alvin R. Howard, Robert psychoanalyst.
E. Jones, Alvin W. Landfield, Leon H. Levy, Sue P. Lloyd, Richard M. Lundy, Wil-
liam H. Lyle Jr., Brendan Maher, Joseph M. Masling, James W. Rohrer, Henry Sam- He pays an explicit tribute only to
uels, Donald Shoemaker, E. Philip Trapp, and Jane H. Wooster. Many of them have John Dewey, the American pragma-
later on given important contributions to the development of PCP. tist “whose philosophy and psychol-
ogy can be read between many of
In contrast to the number of people acknowledged, the bibliography comprises the lines of the psychology of
only 41 references at the end of Volume 1 and no reference at all at the end of Vol- personal constructs” [K1955:154].
ume 2, which appears a bit too scarce for a work of 1217 pages! Not only: a good
Dewey “emphasized the anticipa-
30 of the references are unpublished M.A. theses and Ph.D. theses discussed by
tory nature of behavior and the per-
Kelly’s students at the Ohio State University in late years, and 2 are M.A. theses
son’s use of hypotheses in thinking”
done at Fort Hays Kansas State College. Kelly himself appears only once, as co-
[K1955:129], in a way that parallels
author with A. R. Howard of an article on psychological movement published in John Dewey (1859-1952)
Kelly’s metaphor of the person-as-a-

24
scientist. predicate form are a sort of linguistic
trap since they lead to the conviction
Even though cited only a few times – usually together – in the 1955 book and that every fact consists in some thing
later in The autobiography of a theory [K1963], Korzybski and Moreno seem especially having some quality. A student of
influential in Kelly’s development of his personality theory and role therapy. Actu- Korzybski, D. David Bourland, Jr., came
ally, Kelly writes that “In 1939 the writer began to piece together his interpreta- to the idea of E-Prime, a version of the
tion of the writings of Korzybski and Moreno with certain observations arising English language that excludes all
out of his own clinical experience” [K1955:360]. But the influence of Korzybski and forms of the verb to be. Kelly went back
Moreno on the development of Kelly’s ideas is also documented by the notes to the issue in 1964 in The language of
taken by one of his early students, John R. Barry, at Ohio State University, during hypothesis: Man’s psychological instrument.
a series of lectures given by Kelly in November and December of 1948 In this article, however, Kelly pays his
[SB1991:125]. tribute to a German philosopher, Hans
Vaihinger, author of The Philosophy of “As
The Polish-American semanticist Alfred Korzybski had published Science and Sanity If ” (1911), who had profoundly influ-
in 1933. Curiously, Korzybski like Kelly had been educated in engineering. In this enced also the ideas of Alfred Adler.
book, Korzybski lays the foundation for a new discipline, General Semantics. One of
the basic tenets of general semantics is that human beings cannot experience the Vaihinger argued that human beings
world directly, but only through their abstractions derived from language; there- can never really know the underlying
fore, the structure of languages limits our understanding, whenever there is a lack reality of the world, and that conse- Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933)
of similarity of structure with what is actually happening – “the map is not the quently we construct systems of
territory” is one of Korbyzski’s most famous premises. The reading of Science and thought and then assume that these
Sanity raised questions in Kelly about the interrelation between language and match reality: we behave "as if" the world matches our models. But all matters con-
thought: “Not only did it seem that fronting people might best be regarded in hypothetical ways: which leads Kelly to
the words man uses give and hold propose a new grammar mood: the invitational mood, instead of the indicative, con-
the structure of his thought, but, ditional, subjunctive, or imperative one. The invitational mood would suggest to
more particularly, the names by the listener that a certain novel interpretation of an object might be entertained;
which he calls himself give and hold for example, “Suppose we regard the floor as if it were hard.” This formulation
the structure of his personality.” suggests that the floor is opened to a variety of interpretations, whereas in the
[K1963:56]. Besides, the similarity proposition “The floor is hard” the subject-predicate relationship inheres in the
between Korzybski’s epistemology subject itself: that is the nature of the floor, regardless of who says so.
and Kelly’s assumption of construc-
tive alternativism appears rather Moreno’s psychodrama appears to have performed an important function in speci-
clear. From the notes taken by Barry fying the social form of Kelly’s constructivism. Jacob L. Moreno was a Romanian-
it appears that Kelly was citing American psychiatrist and psychosociologist, regarded as the pioneer of group psy-
those parts of Korzybski that dealt chotherapy. Moreno’s psychodramatic techniques are described in a lengthy article
with semantic changes as a form of that Kelly had read according to Barry, “Inter-personal therapy and the psychopa-
psychotherapy. thology of inter-personal relations”, published in the first issue of the journal So-
ciometry in 1937. Here Moreno introduces techniques of spontaneous improvisa-
There is in Korzybski a more spe- tion, self-presentation, and two types of soliloquies. Kelly was attracted to Mo-
cific aspect that is likely to have reno’s work probably because the psychiatrist was reporting phenomena similar
struck Kelly: the idea that certain to those observed by himself in his teaching and early clinical experiences.
Alfred H. S. Korzybski (1879-1950)
uses of the verb to be in the subject-

25
 In introducing Fixed-Role Therapy - a
therapeutic approach based upon
the self-characterization - Kelly re-
ports four types of clinical observa-
tions which set the stage for reading
Moreno’s writings [K1955:362-368].
All of them had been dramatics expe-
riences that not only showed lasting
effects, but also led Kelly to ask him-
self: “ What would happen if we
took the general view that what peo-
ple do is a feature of what they are;
that the extent to which a person
behaves in a certain way is a measure
of the extent to which he is that kind
of person?” [K1955:363]: a question
dating back to the period in which
Kelly was attending high-school!
Jacob L. Moreno (1889-1974)
Eva Korn photographer, c. 1961 It is very likely that Kelly borrowed
more heavily from Moreno’s sponta-
neous improvisation in formulating
the techniques of his casual enactments and fixed-role therapy [SB1991:132]. By
adopting methods that require persons to enact a role so as to change the way
they construe themselves and others, Kelly was specifying that construction and
reconstruction necessarily occur in relation to the self and others.
Though quoted only once in his published writings in a section on the mathemat-
ics of conceptualization [K1955:305], Kelly acknowledged the influence of Johann F.
Herbart, the German philosopher, psychologist and founder of pedagogy as an aca-
demic discipline. In a personal communication to Dennis N. Hinkle, one of his
students at the Ohio State University, Kelly said: “Johann Herbart’s work on edu-
cation and particularly mathematical psychology influenced me. I think mathemat-
ics is the pure instance of construct functioning–the model of human behaviour.”
Moreover, writing about Herbart in 1932 in an unpublished book called Under-
standable Psychology, Kelly states:
According to [Herbart’s] doctrine of the apperceptive mass the mind could not accept a new idea un-
less it fitted into the ideas which were conscious at the time. In trying to recall or set up an idea
the apperceptive mass, or background of previous experience, must always be taken into considera-
tion. Our perceptions are then really more than perceptions, they are apperceptions, experiences
into which all past experiences are fused as well as the object of the moment. [BJ2008:242]
One can find in this passage the
reference to a view of knowl-
edge as a recursive process, em-
bedded in the Modulation Corol-
lary.
To conclude this section on the
inspirers of Kelly’s ideas, it is
worth mentioning Miller Mair
(1937-2011), a Scottish psy-
chologist who made a great con-
tribution to the elaboration of
PCP as a storytelling psychol-
ogy. Mair believed that Kelly
might have been influenced by a
Scottish, presbyterian philoso-
pher, John Macmurray. Kelly
never cites him, but may have
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) made the acquaintance of
Macmurray’s ideas during his
stay in Edinburgh. Actually, the
parallels between the two are striking. Macmurray holds the primacy of action
over theory in human life, and the essen-
tially relational nature of human beings.
He looked to infancy and early childhood
for evidence of the universal desire for
relationship. In the introduction to The
Self as Agent (1957) Macmurray writes:
The simplest expression that I can find for the
thesis I have tried to maintain is this: All mean-
ingful knowledge is for the sake of action, and all
meaningful action for the sake of friendship."
Actually, this is an aphorism to which
Kelly would have likely subscribed with
pleasure.
John Macmurray (1891-1976)
26
 VOLUME TWO
S ECTION 2

Contents
Preface to Volume Two

11. The Role of the Psychotherapist

12. The Psychotherapeutic Approach

13. The Appraisal of Experiences

14. The Appraisal of Activities

VOLUME ONE
15. Steps in Diagnosis
Preface to Volume One
16. Disorders of Construction
The Editor’s Introduction
17. Disorders of Transition
1. Constructive Alternativism
18. Elaborating the Complaint
2. Basic Theory The paperback edition of 1963, consisting of
19. Elaborating the Personal System the first three chapters of Volume 1 with
some revision.
3. The Nature of Personal Constructs
20. Loosening and Tightening
4. The Clinical Setting
21. Producing Psychotherapeutic Movement
5. The Repertory Test
22. Special Techniques in Psychotherapy
6. The Mathematical Structure of Psychological Space
Index
7. The Analysis of Self-Characterization

8. Fixed-role Therapy

9. Dimensions of Diagnosis

10. Dimensions of Transitions

Bibliography

Index

27
S ECTION 3
Basic Theory
C ONSTRUCTIVE A LTERNATIVISM
All of our present interpretations of the universe are
subject to revision or replacement.
F UNDAMENTAL P OSTULATE
A person’s processes are psychologically channelized
by the ways in which he anticipates events.
D EFINITION OF P ERSONAL C ONSTRUCT
The construct denotes an aspect of the elements
lying within its range of convenience, on the basis of
which at least two elements are similar and contrast
with a third.
C OROLLARIES
CONSTRUCTION COROLLARY
A person anticipates events by construing their replications.
INDIVIDUALITY COROLLARY
Persons differ from each other in their construction of events.
ORGANIZATION COROLLARY
Each person characteristically evolves, for his convenience in anticipating events,
a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between constructs.
DICHOTOMY COROLLARY
A person’s construction system is composed of a finite number of dichotomous
constructs.
CHOICE COROLLARY
A person chooses for himself that alternative in a dichotomized construct through
which he anticipates the greater possibility for extension and definition of his sys-
tem.
RANGE COROLLARY
A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range of events only.
EXPERIENCE COROLLARY
A person’s construction system varies as he successively construes the replica-
tions of events.
MODULATION COROLLARY
The variation in a person’s construction system is limited by the permeability of
the construct within whose range of convenience the variants lie.
FRAGMENTATION COROLLARY
A person may successively employ a variety of construction subsystems which are
inferentially incompatible with each other.
COMMONALITY COROLLARY
To the extent that one person employs a construction of experience which is simi-
lar to that employed by another, his psychological processes are similar to those of
the other person.
SOCIALITY COROLLARY
To the extent that one person construes the construction processes of another, he
may play a role in a social process involving the other person.
28
 EMERGENCE
F ORMAL A SPECTS OF C ONSTRUCTS
The emergent pole of a construct is that one which embraces most of the immedi-
ately perceived context.
RANGE OF CONVENIENCE
A construct’s range of convenience comprises all those things to which the user IMPLICITNESS
would find its application useful.
The implicit pole of a construct is that one which embraces contrasting context. It
contrasts with the emergent pole. Frequently the person has no available symbol
FOCUS OF CONVENIENCE
or name for it; it is symbolized only implicitly by the emergent term.
A constructs focus of convenience comprises those particular things to which the
user would find its application maximally useful. These are the elements upon SYMBOL
which the construct is likely to have been formed originally.
An element in the context of a construct which represents not only itself but also
the construct by which it is abstracted by the user is called the construct’s sym-
ELEMENTS
bol.
The things or events which are abstracted by a person’s use of a construct are
called elements. In some systems these are called objects. PERMEABILITY
A construct is permeable if it admits newly perceived elements to its context. It is
CONTEXT
impermeable if it rejects elements on the basis of their newness.
The context of a construct comprises those elements among which the user ordi-
narily discriminates by means of the construct. It is somewhat more restricted
than the range of convenience, since it refers to the circumstances in which the
construct emerges for practical use, and not necessarily to all the circumstances in C ONSTRUCTS C LASSIFIED A CCORDING TO THE 

which a person might eventually use the construct. It is somewhat more extensive
than the focus of convenience, since the construct may often appear in circum-
N ATURE OF THEIR C ONTROL OVER THEIR 

stances where its application is not optimal. E LEMENTS
POLE
Each construct discriminates between two poles, one at each end of its dichotomy. PREEMPTIVE CONSTRUCT
The elements abstracted are like each other at each pole with respect to the A construct which preempts its elements for membership in its own realm exclu-
construct and are unlike the elements at the other pole. sively is called a preemptive construct. This is the "nothing but" type of construc-
tion – "If this is a ball it is nothing but a ball."
CONTRAST
The relationship between the two poles of a construct is one of contrast. CONSTELLATORY CONSTRUCT
A construct which fixes the other realm memberships of its elements is called a
LIKENESS END constellatory construct. This is stereotyped or typological thinking.
When referring specifically to elements at one pole of a construct, one may use
the term "likeness end" to designate that pole. PROPOSITIONAL CONSTRUCT
A construct which carries no implications regarding the other realm memberships
CONTRAST END of its elements is a propositional construct. This is uncontaminated construction.
When referring specifically to elements at one pole of a construct, one may use
the term "contrast end" to designate the opposite pole.

29
 COMPREHENSIVE CONSTRUCTS
S ECTION 4
A comprehensive construct is one which subsumes a wide variety of events.

Diagnostic Constructs INCIDENTAL CONSTRUCTS

An incidental construct is one which subsumes a narrow variety of events.

SUPERORDINATE CONSTRUCTS
A superordinate construct is one which includes another as one of the elements in
its context.

SUBORDINATE CONSTRUCTS
GENERAL DIAGNOSTIC CONSTRUCTS A subordinate construct is one which is included as an element in the context of
another.
PREVERBAL CONSTRUCTS
REGNANT CONSTRUCTS
A preverbal construct is one which continues to be used, even though it has no
consistent word symbols. It may or may not have been devised before the person A regnant construct is a kind of superordinate construct which assigns each of its
had command of speech. elements to a category on an all-or-none basis, as in classical logic. It tends to be
nonabstractive.
SUBMERGENCE
CORE CONSTRUCTS
The submerged pole of a construct is the one which is less available for applica-
tion to events. A core construct is one which governs the person's maintenance processes.

SUSPENSION PERIPHERAL CONSTRUCTS

A suspended element is one which is omitted from the context of a construct as A peripheral construct is one which can be altered without serious modification of
the result of revision of the person's construct system. the core structure.

LEVEL OF COGNITIVE AWARENESS TIGHT CONSTRUCTS

The level of cognitive awareness ranges from high to low. A high-level construct is A tight construct is one which leads to unvarying predictions.
one which is readily expressed in socially effective symbols; whose alternatives are
LOOSE CONSTRUCTS
both readily accessible; which falls well within the range of convenience of the cli-
ent's major constructions; and which is not suspended by its superordinating con- A loose construct is one which leads to varying predictions but retains its identity.
structs.
DEPENDENCY CONSTRUCTS
DILATION The constructs by which certain persons are construed by the child in relation to
Dilation occurs when a person broadens his perceptual field in order to reorganize his or her own survival. They collect both persons and a particular kind of event
it on a more comprehensive level. It does not, in itself, include the comprehensive under the same rubric.
reconstruction of those elements.
ROLE CONSTRUCTS
CONSTRICTION The constructs which have as elements the construction processes of other peo-
Constriction occurs when a person narrows his perceptual field in order to mini- ple.
mize apparent incompatibilities.

30
CONSTRUCTS RELATING TO TRANSITION

THREAT
Threat is the awareness of an imminent comprehensive change in one's core struc-
tures.

FEAR
Fear is the awareness of an imminent incidental change in one's core structures.

ANXIETY
Anxiety is the awareness that the events with which one is confronted lie outside
the range of convenience of his construct system.

GUILT
Guilt is the awareness of dislodgment of the self from one's core role structure.

AGGRESSIVENESS
Aggressiveness is the active elaboration of one's perceptual field.

HOSTILITY
Hostility is the continued effort to extort validational evidence in favor of a type of
social prediction which has already been recognized as a failure.

C-P-C CYCLE
The C-P-C Cycle is a sequence of construction which involves in succession, cir-
cumspection, preemption, and control, and leads to a choice precipitating the per-
son into a particular situation.

IMPULSIVITY
Impulsivity is a characteristic foreshortening of the C-P-C Cycle.

CREATIVITY CYCLE
The Creativity Cycle is one which starts with loosened construction and termi-
nates with tightened and validated construction.

EXPERIENCE CYCLE
The unity of experience is a cycle embracing five phases: anticipation, investment,
encounter, confirmation or disconfirmation, and constructive revision.

31
C HAPTER 3

The Exploration of
Personal Construct
Systems

In his main work of 1955, Kelly described three instru-

ments aimed at exploring personal construct systems:
the Role Construct Repertory Test (more commonly, Reper-
tory Grid or RepGrid), the Situational Resources Repertory
Test (more commonly, Dependency Grid or DepGrid), and
the Self-Characterization. Other instruments have been
added to these in the following years, devised by other
authors.

Some of them are also very popular in the

By kind courtesy of Valerie Beeby http://purple-owl.com
psychological literature outside PCP.

REPERTORY GRID
The RepGrid allows understanding of how people construe a part of their experien-
tial reality. After having selected a number (usually 12-20) of elements (in a clini-
cal setting, usually significant people) to be written at the top of the columns, the
person is asked to compare and contrast successive sets of triads (for example,
myself, my mother, my father) and formulate “some important way in which two
of the figures are alike, and different from the third.” The three elements repre-
sent the basis for the elicitation of personal constructs. The constructs are written
in the rows according to the verbal labels used by the person, and a convention is
used to record the application of each construct to all the elements in the col-
umns. Depending on the convention chosen, it is customary to distinguish binary,
ranking, and rating grids.
The grid is amenable to a wide range of analyses, nowadays facilitated by a num-
ber of computer programs, many of which available via the Internet. Analyses in-
clude:
• correlations between constructs, suggesting that two or more constructs tend to be
applied together, forming a sort of semantic space;
• correlations between elements, showing the perceived distances between them, al-
lowing a number of thematic analyses: for example, the distance between “self ”
(“I as I am”) and “ideal self ” (“I as I would like to be”), used as an index of self-
esteem; the distance between “self ” and “social self ”(“I as seen by others”), in-
dex of comprehension; the distance between “ideal self ” and “future self ” (“I as
I expect to be” in a given future”), index of expectancy of change; the distance
between “self ” and “others” (the average distance between the element self and
each of the other not-self elements), index of social isolation;
• a number of more or less complex statistical analyses aimed at calculating sev-
eral cognitive measures, such as:
• intensity, regarded as related to a dimension of tightness/looseness, and
therefore able to discriminate between thought disordered schizophrenics
and other psychiatric and normal groups according to Bannister's (1960)
hypothesis of serial invalidation;
• cognitive complexity, a measure defined as the capacity to construe social
behaviour in a multidimensional way, and therefore relative to the num-
ber of independent discriminations available to the person;
• extremity ratings, the extent to which people tend to use the extreme points
in bipolar scales as opposed to the more central points, indicating, depend-
ing on the authors, maladjustment or personal meaningfulness;
• ordination and superordinacy, measures aimed at assessing a dimension of
subordinacy/superordinacy between constructs;
• articulation, a measure aimed at judging the structure of personal construct
systems in terms of their being articulated (the normal conceptual struc-
ture), or non-articulated (the obsessional conceptual structure), that is,
monolithic or segmented.
• principal components analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, correspondence analysis,
all aimed at somehow mapping the structure of personal construct systems in
terms of their components (elements, constructs, groups of constructs) and the
distances between them.
Particular types of repertory grids have been invented for specific purposes.
DEPENDENCY GRID
The DepGrid is aimed at assessing the dispersion of dependency. In its original
formulation the grid contains a list of 23 problem situations which are likely to be
relevant for most people. The person selects, from a list of role titles, the people
they believe have or have had an important part in their life. The person is al-
lowed to indicate more than one individual for each role, and to include people
who are dead or not geographically close. The indication of a minimum of ten re-
sources is encouraged. Sometimes, the element `myself ' is introduced by the ad-
ministrator as the last resource in the grid. The following instructions are then
supplied: “Think of a time when you had the most problem with ‘x’. If these peo-
ple had been around at that time, to whom would you have gone for help?”
Participants note down with a tick which people they would have turned to for
help. It is specified that for each problem situation more choices are possible, and
that the self category can be filled in addition to going to others or as a choice be-
tween either themselves or others. Face inspection yields information as to
whether the person tends to call on everyone for every kind of help or to turn pre-
vailingly to one or two people (both strategies would indicate a relatively undis-
persed dependency), or the ticks are almost distributed among the resources (dis-
persed dependency). Nowadays, statistical ways to determine relative dispersion of
dependency other than by inspection have been presented.
33

SELF-CHARACTERIZATION
The Self-characterization technique is the one which best fits the basic assump-
tion of personal construct theory as a narrative approach to psychology.
The person is asked to characterize himself or herself according to the following
request:
«I want you to write a character sketch of [Harry Brown], just as if he were the
principal character in a play. Write it as it might be written by a friend who knew
him very intimately and very sympathetically , perhaps better than anyone ever
really could know him. Be sure to write it in the third person. For example, start
out by saying, ‘Harry Brown is. . .’»
The term “character sketch” permits the client more latitude than terms such as
“self-description”, “self-analysis” and the like. The term “sketch”, as well as the
invitation to use the third person, conveys the idea that the wholeness of the char-
acterisation is important, rather than detailed elements or a catalogue of faults.
Also the suggestion to write as if in the role of a friend encourages a construction
of the client from an “external” point of view, while the phrase “perhaps better
than anyone ever really could know him” tends to free certain clients from writing
the sketch as some actual, known person would write it. “Intimately” indicates
that something more than superficial appearances is to be covered by the client,
and “sympathetically” is likely to encourage an acceptance of themselves and thus
a narrative of what they are, rather than of what they are not, or ought to be. An
overall purpose of such instructions is that of minimizing threat, placing the cli-
ent “in a protected spot within a loosely construed system which has the given
dimensions of first, second, and third persons, friendship, intimacy, and sympa-
thy” (K1955:243).
Kelly suggests various techniques for the analysis of self-characterizations to bring
them into focus. They are qualitative techniques of text analysis, in a contempo-
rary language, consisting of
• the observation of sequence and transition, starting from the assumption that the
protocol represents a true continuity;
• the observation of organization, seeking the topic sentences;
• the reflection against context, consisting in understanding the meaning of each
statement in the context of the protocol as a whole;
• the collation of terms, observing the terms which are repeated as such or through
their personal equivalents, and the linkages between terms;
• the shifting of emphasis, so as to experiment with alternative emphases and inflec-
tions in reading each sentence and paragraph;
• the restatement of the argument, with the psychologist trying, from time to time, to
express the same theme in his or her own words, in the attempt to subsume
the client's point of view.
The psychologist then proceeds to the analysis of contextual areas invoked by the pro-
tocol, consisting in paying attention to the topical areas selected by the clients,
within which they identify themselves. The thematic analysis is relative to the
cause-effect relationships, that is, the client's reasons and explanations. Even
more meaningful to the therapist's understanding of the client's constructions is
the dimensional analysis, where the emphasis is placed upon similarities and con-
trasts, so as to understand the dichotomized alternatives the client continually
has to choose from. The final step consists of the professional subsuming of personal
constructs: as in the therapeutic conversations, the therapist will try to reach a pro-
fessional construction of their understanding of the client's construction system
by means of professional constructs, also called diagnostic constructs.
ESSENTIAL READINGS
Beail, N. (Ed.). (1985). Repertory grid technique and personal constructs: Applications in clinical
& educational settings. London: Croom Helm.
Fransella, F., & Dalton, P. (1990). Personal construct counseling in action. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Fransella, F., Bell, R. C., & Bannister, D. (2003). A manual for repertory grid technique (2nd
ed.). Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Jankowicz, A. D. (2003). The easy guide to repertory grids. Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Fromm, M. (2004). Introduction to the repertory grid interview. Münster: Waxmann.
Caputi, P., Viney, L.L., Walker, B.M., Crittenden, N. (Eds.) (2012). Personal construct method-
ology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Denicolo, P., Long, T., Bradley-Cole, K. (2016). Constructivist approaches and research methods:
A practical guide to exploring personal meanings. London: Sage.
34
C HAPTER 4

PCT in Relation to Other

Psychological and
Philosophical Approaches

Personal construct theory eludes being framed in the

pigeonholes of the more traditional schools of psychol-

ogy. Still, many authors have tried to classify it, and

others have pointed to its affinity with several

psychological and philosophical perspectives.

It is worth quoting the following story narrated by Kelly.
I have been so puzzled over the early labeling of personal construct theory as “cognitive” that sev-
eral years ago I set out to write another short book to make it clear that I wanted no part of cogni-
tive theory. The manuscript was about a third completed when I gave a lecture at Harvard Univer-
sity with the title, “Personal Construct Theory as a Line of Inference.” Following the lecture, Pro-
fessor Gordon Allport explained to the students that my theory was not a “cognitive” theory but
an “emotional” theory. Later the same afternoon, Dr. Henry Murray called me aside and said,
“You know, don't you, that you are really an existentialist.” Since that time I stepped into almost
all the open manholes that psychological theorists can possibly fall into. For example, in Warsaw,
where I thought my lecture on personal construct theory would be an open challenge to dialectical
materialism, the Poles, who had been conducting some seminars on personal construct theory be-
fore my arrival, explained to me that “personal construct theory was just exactly what dialectical
materialism stood for.” Along the way also I have found myself classified in a volume on personal-
ity theories as one of the “learning theorists,” a classification that seems to me so patently ridicu-
lous that I have gotten no end of amusement out of it.
A few years ago an orthodox psychoanalyst insisted, after hearing me talk about psychotherapy,
that, regardless of what I might say about Freud, and regardless even of my failure to fall in the
apostolic succession to which a personal psychoanalysis entitled one, I was really “a psychoana-
lyst.” This charge was repeated by a couple of psychoanalytically sophisticated psychiatrists in Lon-
don last fall, and nothing I could say would shake their conviction. I have, of course, been called a
Zen Buddhist, and last fall one of our former students, now a distinguished psychologist, who
was invited back to give a lecture, spent an hour and a half in a seminar corrupting my students
with the idea that I was really a “behaviorist.” [K1965:216-217]
The book Kelly would have liked to write but did not have time to finish would
have been titled The Human Feeling or Personal Construct Theory: A Theory of the Human
Passions.
It seems easy to share the comment that PCT “has a lot of second cousins but no
siblings [as if] the theory was of parthenogenetic origin.” [S1977:208]
Of course, it is possible to construe similarities and differences between PCT and
other perspectives. Some of them have been more frequently highlighted. The fol-
lowing is a list of references clustered around several perspectives.
PCT AND COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Warren, W. G. (1990). Is personal construct psychology a cognitive psychology? In-
ternational Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 3, 393-414.
Adams-Webber, J. R. (1990). Personal construct theory and cognitive science. Interna-
tional Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 3, 415-421.
Warren, W. G. (1991). Rising up from down under: A response to Adams-Webber
on cognitive psychology and personal construct theory. International Journal of
Personal Construct Psychology, 4, 43-49.
Warren, B. (1991). Concepts, constructs, cognitive psychology, and personal
construct theory. The Journal of Psychology, 125, 525-536.
Winter, D. A., & Watson, S. (1999). Personal construct psychotherapy and the cogni-
tive therapies: Different in theory but can they be differentiated in practice? Journal
of Constructivist Psychology, 12, 1-22.
PCT AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
Chiari, G., & Nuzzo, M. L. (1996). Personal construct theory within psychological
constructivism: Precursor or avant-garde? In B. M. Walker, J. Costigan, L. L. Viney &
B. Warren (Eds.), Personal construct theory: A psychology for the future (pp. 25-54). Syd-
ney: The Australian Psychological Society.
Chiari, G., & Nuzzo, M. L. (1996). Psychological constructivisms: A metatheoretical
differentiation. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 9, 163-184.
Chiari, G., & Nuzzo, M. L. (2004). Steering personal construct theory toward herme-
neutic constructivism. In S. K. Bridges & J. D. Raskin (Eds.), Studies in meaning 2:
Bridging the personal and social in constructivist psychology (pp. 51-65). New York: Pace
University Press.
Raskin, J. D. (2002) Constructivism in psychology: Personal construct psychology,
radical constructivism, and social constructionism. American Communication Journal,
5, 3. Retrievable from:
http://www1.appstate.edu/orgs/acjournal/holdings/vol5/iss3/special/raskin.pdf
Raskin, J. D., Weihs, K. D., & Morano, L. A. (2005). Personal construct psychother-
apy meets constructivism: Convergence, divergence, possibility. In D. A. Winter &
L. L. Viney (Eds.), Personal construct psychotherapy: Advances in theory, practice and re-
search (pp. 3-20). London: Whurr.
Raskin, J. D. (2016). Personal construct psychology in relation to an integrative
constructivism. In D. A. Winter & N. Reed (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of personal
construct psychology (pp. 34-44). London: Wiley.
36
PCT AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
Mancuso, J. C. (1996). Constructionism, personal construct psychology and narra-
tive psychology. Theory & Psychology, 6, 47-70.
Burkitt, I. (1996). Social and personal constructs: A division left unresolved. Theory
& Psychology, 6, 71-77.
Wortham, S. (1996). Are constructs personal? Theory & Psychology, 6, 79-84.
Warren, B. (2004). Construing constructionism: Some reflections on the tension
between PCP and social constructionism. Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 1, 34-
44.
Pavlović, J. (2011). Personal construct psychology and social constructionism are
not incompatible: Implications of a reframing. Theory & Psychology, 21, 396-411.
Efran, J. S., McNamee, S., Warren, B., & Raskin, J. D. (2014). Personal construct
psychology, radical constructivism, and social constructionism: A dialogue (2014).
Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 27, 1-13.
PCT, PHENOMENOLOGY AND HERMENEUTICS
Butt, T. (1998). Sociality, role, and embodiment. Journal of Constructivist Psychology,
11, 105-116.
Butt, T. (1998). Sedimentation and elaborative choice. Journal of Constructivist Psychol-
ogy, 11, 265-281.
Butt, T. (2004). Understanding, explanation, and personal constructs. Personal
Construct Theory & Practice, 1, 21-27. ☟
Armezzani, M., & Chiari, G. (2014). Ideas for a phenomenological interpretation
and elaboration of personal construct theory. Part 1. Kelly between constructivism
and phenomenology. Costruttivismi, 1, 136-149. ☟
Armezzani, M., & Chiari, G. (2014). Ideas for a phenomenological interpretation
and elaboration of personal construct theory. Part 2. Husserl and Kelly: A case of
commonality. Costruttivismi, 1, 168-185. ☟
Armezzani, M., & Chiari, G. (2015). Ideas for a phenomenological interpretation
and elaboration of personal construct theory. Part 3. Clinic, psychotherapy, research.
Costruttivismi, 2, 58-77. ☟
PCT AND PRAGMATISM
Butt, T. (2001). Social action and personal constructs. Theory & Psychology, 11, 75-95.
Butt, T. (2006). Personal construct therapy and its history in pragmatism. In P.
Caputi, H. Foster & L. L. Viney (Eds.), Personal construct psychology: New ideas (pp. 20-
34). London: Wiley.
Procter, H. (2011). The roots of Kellian notions in philosophy: The categorial phi-
losophers – Kant, Hegel and Peirce. ☟
Procter, H. (2014). Peirce's contributions to constructivism and personal construct
psychology: I. Philosophical aspects. Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 11, 6-33. ☟
Procter, H. (2016). Peirce's contributions to constructivism and personal construct
psychology: II. Science, logic and inquiry. Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 13, 210-
265. ☟
PCT AND HUMANISTIC-EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGIES
Holland, R. (1970). George Kelly: Constructive innocent and reluctant existentialist.
In D. Bannister (Ed.), Perspectives in personal construct theory (pp. 111-132). London:
Academic Press.
Soffer, J. (1990). George Kelly versus the existentialists: Theoretical and therapeutic
implications. International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 3, 357-376.
Epting, F. R., & Leitner, L. M. (1992). Humanistic psychology and personal
construct theory. Humanistic Psychologist, 20, 243-259.
Benjafield, J. G. (2008). George Kelly: Cognitive psychologist, humanistic psycholo-
gist, or something else entirely? History of Psychology, 11, 239-262.
PCT AND FAMILY SYSTEMIC APPROACHES
Feixas, G. (1990). Personal construct theory and the systemic therapies: Parallel or-
convergent trends? Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 16, 1-20.
Feixas, G., Procter, H. G., & Neimeyer, G. (1992). Convergent lines of assessment:
Systemic and constructivist contributions. In Neimeyer, G. (Ed.), Casebook of con-
structivist assessment. New York: Sage.
Procter, H. G., & Ugazio, V. (2017). Family constructs and semantic polarities: A
convergent perspective? In D. Winter, P. Cummins, H. G. Procter & N. Reed (Eds.),
Personal construct psychology at 60. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub-
lishing.
37
PCT AND PSYCHOANALYSIS PCT AND OTHER TRENDS IN PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

Soldz, S. (1988). Constructivist tendencies in recent psychoanalysis. International Warren, W. G. (1989). Personal construct theory and general trends in contempo-
Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 1, 329-347. rary philosophy. International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 2, 287-300.

Delmonte, M. (1990). George Kelly's personal construct theory: Some comparisons
with Freudian theory. Psychologia: An international journal of psychology in the Orient, 33,
73-83.
Warren, B. (1990). Psychoanalysis and personal construct theory: An exploration.
Journal of Psychology, 124, 449-463.
Warren, B. (1998). Philosophical dimensions of personal construct psychology. London:
Routledge.
Brennan, J. (1999). Picture this: Wittgenstein and personal construct theory. In C.
Mace (Ed.), Heart and soul: The therapeutic face of philosophy (pp. 67-83). Florence, KY:
Taylor & Frances/Routledge.

Soldz, S. (1996). Psychoanalysis and constructivism: Convergence in meaning-
making perspectives. In K. T. Kuehlwein & H. Rosen (Eds.), Constructing realities:
Meaning-making perspectives for psychotherapists (pp. 277-306). San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
PCT AND NARRATIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Mair, J. M. M. (1988). Psychology as storytelling. International Journal of Personal
Construct Psychology, 1, 125-137.
Mair, M. (1989). Kelly, Bannister, and a story-telling psychology. International Journal
of Personal Construct Psychology, 2, 1-14.
Butt, T. (2008). George Kelly: The psychology of personal constructs. Houndmills, Basing-
stoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chiari, G., & Nuzzo, M. L. (2010). Constructivist psychotherapy: A narrative hermeneutic
approach. London: Routledge.
Butt, T., & Warren, B. (2016). Personal construct theory and philosophy. In D. A.
Winter & N. Reed (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of personal construct psychology (pp. 11-
23). London: Wiley.
Warren, B. (2016). Philosophy and psychology: The distinctiveness of the theory of
personal constructs. In D. A. Winter & N. Reed (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of personal
construct psychology (pp. 45-56). London: Wiley.

Mair, J. M. M. (1990). Telling psychological tales. International Journal of Personal

Construct Psychology, 3, 121-135.

Botella, L., Corbella, S., Gómez, T., Herrero, O., & Pacheco, M. (2005). A personal
construct approach to narrative and post-modern therapies. In D. A. Winter & L. L.
Viney (Eds.), Personal construct psychotherapy: Advances in theory, practice and research
(pp. 69-80). London: Whurr.

PCT AND BUDDHISM

McWilliams, S. A. (1984). Construing and Buddhist psychology. Constructs, 3(1), 1-

2.

Kenny, V., & Delmonte, M. (1986). Meditation as viewed through personal

construct theory. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 16, 1, 4-22.

Thirakoul, P. P. (1996/97). Buddhist meditation and personal construct psychology.

Website Serendip Studio. ☟

McWilliams, S. A. (2016). Personal construct psychology and buddhism. In D. A.

Winter & N. Reed (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of personal construct psychology (pp. 439-
451). London: Wiley.

38
C HAPTER 5

The Writings of G. A. Kelly

The Centre for Personal Construct Psychology's first premises in

132 Warwick Way, Pimlico, London.
From http://www.centrepcp.co.uk/history.htm

This chapter lists all the known works of Kelly, published and unpub-
lished, sorted according to the year of their writing or publication.
Compared to other bibliographies of Kelly’s writings, the following
includes many amendments and integrations. DOI links are also
added, when available.

The vast majority of Kelly’s writings were collected by Fay Fransella

thanks to the courtesy of Kelly’s wife, Gladys Thompson Kelly, and
kept at the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology in London, estab-
lished in 1981. In 2005 the Centre became part of the School of Psy-
chology at the University of Hertfordshire, UK (N. Reed Director, D.
Winter Consultant), and the writings are housed as The Fay Fransella
The launch of the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology in London, 1981. From left to right: Ga-
and Miller Mair Collections of PCP Books, Papers and Dissertations in a spe- vin Dunnett, Cassie Cooper, Peggy Dalton, Fay Fransella, Don Bannister and Helen Jones.
From http://www.centrepcp.co.uk/history.htm
cial room in the University’s Learning Resources Centre.
Education Period The drawings in this chapter were prepared by Kelly
and were to illustrate Understandable Psychology, which
was never published. It is a predominantly psycho-
physiological book written for a lay public. The draw-
1924 ings were published in the newsletter Constructs, 1982,
Vol. 1, N. 4, and 1989, Vol. 7, N. 1.
The sincere motive.
Messenger of Peace, 49, 76-80.

1925
Forgotten issues.
Friends University, Wichita,
KS.

1926
The call to arms.
Unpublished novel.

1927
A plan for socializing
Friends University with
respect to student partici-
pation in school control.
University of Kansas, Wich-
ita, KS.

1928
One thousand workers and their leisure.
Unpublished Master thesis, University of Kansas, Wichita, KS.

1929
Fuselage stress analysis and design specifications for Skylark Model I.
Report to the U. S. Bureau of Aeronautics in support of an application for a manufactur-
ing license for the Watkins Aircraft Co., Wichita, KS.

Onta
Poem (between 1929 and 1945).
Transcribed in F. Fransella, George Kelly. London, Sage, 1955 (pp. 46-48).

40
1930 1936
Social inheritance. Handbook of clinic prac-
University of Edinburgh, Scotland. tice.
Published in P. Stringer & D. Bannister (Eds.), Constructs of sociality and individuality (pp. 4-17). Lon- Unpublished manuscript,
don: Academic Press, 1979. Fort Hays Kansas State
College.
Prediction of teaching success.
Unpublished B. Ed. thesis, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
1937
1931 (January). Report to the
president of Fort Hays
Common factors in reading and speech disabilities. Kansas State College
concerning
Unpublished PhD dissertation, State University of Iowa. psychological clinical
services.
Fort Hays Kansas State
Fort Hays Kansas State College Period College.

Stories from the psy-

chology clinic.
1932
The Aerend: A Kansas Quar-
Some common factors in reading and speech disabilities. terly (Fort Hays Kansas
State College), 1937, 8(1),
Psychological Monographs, 43, 175-201. [DOI: 10.1037/h0093288] 57-61.

Understandable psychology. The psychological clinic's use of practical rather than ideal recommendations.
Unpublished manuscript, Fort Hays Kansas State College. Proceedings of the 45th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Min-
neapolis, Minnesota, September 1-4, 1937.
Psychological Bulletin, 1937, 34(9), 746 [Abstract] [DOI: 10.1037/h0060801]
1933
Some observations on the relation of cerebral dominance to the perception of sym-
bols. 1938
Psychological Bulletin, 1933, 30(8), 583-584. [Abstract] [DOI: 10.1037/h0068157] The practical effectiveness of certain general types of recommendations made by a
psychological clinic.
Journal of General Psychology, 1938, 19(1), 211-217.

1935 [DOI: 10.1080/00221309.1938.9711197]
Some observations on the relation of the principle of physiological polarity and
symmetry and the doctrine of cerebral dominance to the perception of symbols. Outline for the study of a child.
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1935, 18, 202-213. [DOI: 10.1037/h0057172] Fort Hays Kansas State College.

Differential diagnosis in the psychological clinic. A method of diagnosing personality in the psychological clinic.
Psychological Bulletin, 1935, 32(9), 684-685. [Abstract] [DOI: 10.1037/h0052493] The Psychological Record, 1938, 2(3), 95-111.

____, & Warnock, W. G., Inductive trigonometry. The assumption of an originally homogeneous universe and some of its statistical
Unpublished textbook, workbook, diagnostic tests, & remedial exercises in trigonometry. implications.
Journal of Psychology, 1938, 5(1), 201-208. [DOI: 10.1080/00223980.1938.9917563]

41
The place of the psychologist in the small school system.
Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Sciences, 1938, 48, 183. [Abstract]
World War II And University Of

The person as a laboratory subject, as a statistical case, and as a clinical client.
Maryland Period
Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Sciences, 1938, 48, 186. [Abstract]
1944
1939 Problems in the aviation training of British Royal Navy Cadets.
(May 4). Clinic ranks high in speech department. Report to U. S. Navy.
State College Leader, 1939, 4.
1945
1940 ____, & al., Attrition in U. S. Naval Aviation.
Observations made in a search for dynamic and accessible factors in intellectual
development.
Fort Hays Kansas State College, Studies in Clinical Psychology, 1940, 1, 5-10. ____, & al., War weariness in U. S. Naval Aviation.

Some practical considerations in the formulation of clinical recommendations.

Design of the critical difference computer. Design computations and specifications
Psychological Bulletin, 1940, 37(8), 576. [Abstract] [DOI: 10.1037/h0057904] for an analog computer.
Special Devices Division, Bureau of Aeronautics, U. S. Navy.
1941
Perceptual integration in the
Hemphill, J. K., & ____, A comprehensive plan for case summaries. design of aircraft instrument
Psychological Bulletin, 1941, 38(7), 715. [Abstract] [DOI: 10.1037/h0050099] panels.
Report to Aviation Psychology
Handbook of psychological clinic procedure. Branch, Division of Aviation
Fort Hays Kansas State College. Medicine, Bureau of Medicine
and Surgery, U. S. Navy.

Outline for a clinical case study.

New methods in applied psy-
Fort Hays Kansas State College. chology.
Proceedings of the Maryland Con-
1942 ference on Military Contributions
to Methodology in Applied Psy-
____, & Robinson, A. J., A further validation of role therapy. chology held at the University of
Maryland, November 27-28,
Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, St. 1945, under the auspices of the
Louis, May 1-2, 1942. Military Division of the American
Psychological Bulletin, 1942, 39(8), 596. [Abstract] [DOI: 10.1037/h0056662] Psychological Association.
New methods in applied psychology
Bishop, F., & ____, A projective method of personality investigation. (Kelly G. A. editor). Report of the
1945 Conference on Military Psychology.
Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, St. College Park, MD: University of
Louis, May 1-2, 1942. Maryland, 1947.
Psychological Bulletin, 1942, 39(8), 599 [Abstract] [DOI: 10.1037/h0056662]

42
1946 Single level versus legisla-
tion for different levels of
Standardization of techniques in clinical psychology. psychological training and
experience.
Unpublished manuscript, University of Maryland.
American Psychologist, 1950,
5(4), 109, 111. [DOI:
1947 10.1037/h0063664]

The aims of the Maryland Conference.

In G. A. Kelly (Ed.), New methods in applied psychology. College Park, MD: University of 1951
Maryland, 1947. Psychological approaches
to the management of pa-
tients.

Ohio State University Period Unpublished address, Hous-

ton, TX, U. S. Veterans Ad-
ministration Hospital.

1948 The psychology of

personal constructs.
Practice in interdisciplinary collaboration.
Unpublished address, Houston, TX, U. S. Veterans Administration Hospital.
Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University.

The psychological construction of life.

Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University.

1950 Training for professional function in clinical psychology: 2. Principles of training in

clinical psychology.
A student's outline of graduate training in clinical psychology at Ohio State Univer- American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1951, 21(2), 312-318.

sity. [DOI: 10.111/j.1939-0025.1951.tb06105.x]
Ohio State University.

Problems of mental health.

1952
Address.
 Alternatives.
In Role of education in American life: A College of Education Conference in Celebration of the 75th Anniversary
of the Ohio State University, April 20 and 21, University Hall Chapel (pp. 84-91). Columbus, OH: College Unpublished address, Purdue University.
of Education, Ohio State University.
Theoretical behavior.
The organization of an agency. Unpublished address, Purdue University.
Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University.
Requirements of training and competence for psychological participation in reha-
The place of psychology in Southern Illinois University. bilitation.
Unpublished report to the President, Southern Illinois University. Unpublished address, Milwaukee Conference on Rehabilitation.

____, & Moore, B. V., Report of survey of psychology at the University of Louisville. 1953
A plan for a comprehensive experimental study of the uses of television in teacher
education.
Annual reports, 1953-1954, New Jersey State Teachers College at Montclair.

43
A preliminary inquiry leading to a plan for a comprehensive experimental study of Knowledge: Discovery or invention?
the uses of television in teacher education. Unpublished fragment, Louisville VA Hospital.
Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University.

Contributions of learning theory to psychopathology.

1955
Unpublished paper, Midwestern Psychological Association. I itch too: A comment.
American Psychologist, 1955, 10(4), 172-173. [DOI: 10.1037/h0047401]
A student's outline of graduate training in clinical psychology in the Ohio State Uni-
versity. Television at the classroom door.
Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University. Unpublished manuscript.

Where do little hypothe- Television and the teacher.

ses come from?
American Psychologist, 1955, 10(10), 590-592. [DOI: 10.1037/h0044033]
Paper presented at the Mid-
western Psychological Asso-
ciation symposium, The role Emerging concepts that affect interprofessional alignments in psychology.
of theory in training clinical Discussion of the findings of the Psychology Commission.
psychologists. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1955, 63, 359-364.

Published in Constructs (The [DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1955.tb36591.x]
Newsletter of the Centre for
Personal Construct Psychology),
1985, 3(4), 3-5 The psychology of personal constructs. (Vols. 2)
New York: Norton. Vol. 1: A theory of personality; Vol. 2: Clinical diagnosis and psycho-
1954 therapy.
Reprinted by Routledge, London and New York, 1991, in association with the Centre for Personal
Collet, G. M., & ____, Clini- Construct Psychology, London.
cal validity and conceptual Paperback edition: A theory of personality: The psychology of personal constructs. New York: Norton,
consistency. 1963 [The first three chapters of Kelly's two-volume work, with a new introduction by the author.
Chapter 3, § 23 (Conclusion), includes a paragraph not present in the original edition]
Unpublished manuscript.
Spanish trans.: Teoría de la personalidad: La psicología de las construcciones personales. Buenos Aires: Edi-
ciones Troquel, 1966.
Collet, G. M., & ____, Pre- German trans.: Die Psychologie der persönlichen Konstrukte. Paderborn: Junfermann, 1986.
diction and communica-
Italian trans.: [some chapters from Vol. 1] La psicologia dei costrutti personali. Teoria e personalità. Mi-
tion problems illustrated lano: Cortina, 2004.
with the Rorschach test.
Unpublished manuscript. (September 1). Interdisciplinary collaboration.
Presidential address at Division 13 (Consulting Division), American Psychological Asso-
Conrad, L. H., & ____, Television in a time of educational crises. ciation, San Francisco, CA.
Unpublished book. Published in Newsletter of Division, 1955, 13

____, & Conrad, L. H., Report on classroom television. (November 19). Next steps for the profession of psychology.
Unpublished manuscript. Address, Ohio Psychological Association.

Howard, A. R., & ____, A theoretical approach to psychological movement.

1956
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1954, 49(3), 399-404.

[DOI: 10.1037/h0061850] Rep and Res Tests.
Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University.

44
Doctoral training in psychology in Southern Illinois University. Some preliminary thoughts on what one should seek first.
Report to the President, Southern Illinois University. Unpublished manuscript.

Issues: Hidden or mislaid. Problems of clinical psychology in an industrial setting.

American Psychologist, 1956, 11(2), 112-113. [DOI: 10.1037/h0045993] Paper presented at the
Meeting of the American
Psychological Association,
1957 Washington, DC.

Cry of an exasperated crusader.

Prediction and control.
Review of Mike Gorman, Every other bed. Cleveland: World Pub. Co.
Contemporary Psychology, 1957, 2, 47. Unpublished manuscript.

The clinical psychologist as navigator. Te a c h e r- s t u d e n t r e l a-

tions at the university
Review of William Alvin Hunt, The clinical psychologist. Springfield, IL, Thomas. level.
Contemporary Psychology, 1957, 2, 183-184.
Unpublished manuscript.
Spanish trans.: Las relaciones
Man's construction of his alternatives. entre el profesor y el estudi-
Paper presented at a conference sponsored by the Department of Psychology, Syracuse ante en el nivel universitario.
Revista de la Facultad de Estudios
University, Spring 1957. Generales, Universidad de Puerto
Published in G. Lindzey (Ed.), Assessment of human motives (pp. 33-64). New York: Rinehart, 1958. Rico, 1959, 2(3-6), 18-19.
Reprinted in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp.
66-93). New York: Wiley, 1969. Is treatment a good idea?
Address to a Conference
Hostility. on Treatment, U. S. Veter-
ans Administration Hospital, Sheridan, WY, 1958.
Presidential address, Clinical Division, American Psychological Association, New York
Published in A. R. Howard (Ed.), Therapeutic roles in patient treatment (pp. 20-25). Sheridan, WY:
City. Veterans Administration Hospital, 1959.
Published in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp.
267-280). New York: Wiley, 1969. Republished in Constructs (The Newsletter of the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology), 1983, 2(2), 1-
3.

Republished in F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of personal construct psychology (pp. 233-236).
1958 Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2003.

The theory and technique of assessment.

Annual Review of Psychology, 1958, 9, 323-352.
 1959
[DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ps.09.020158.001543]
(January 17-18). The function of interpretation in psychotherapy.
Personal construct theory and the psychotherapeutic interview. A post-doctoral Institute on Verbal communication in psychotherapy, Los Angeles Society of
Clinical Psychologists in Private Practice (A Division of the South California
Ohio State University. Psychological Association) and the Department of Psychology, University of California,
Published in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp. Los Angeles.
224-264). New York: Wiley, 1969.
Reprinted in Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1977, 1(4), 355-362. [DOI: 10.1007/BF01663999]
Feelings for and feelings of (The ontology of feeling).
Ohio State University.
Outline of psychopathology.
Published in Constructs (The Newsletter of the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology), 1983, 2(1), 3.
Ohio State University. [Writing completed in 1953]

45
Values, knowledge and social control. Don Juan.
Unpublished manuscript prepared for a symposium of the American Psychological Asso- Ohio State University.
ciation, Cincinnati (read by E. L. Kelly in view of the author's illness). Published in B. Maher (Ed.),
Clinical psychology and personal-
ity: The selected papers of George
Outline of psychotherapy. Kelly (pp. 333-351). New York:
Ohio State University. [Writing completed in 1953] Wiley, 1969.

1960 1961
Review of Mental health and human relations in education by L. Kaplan. (April 10). A mathematical
approach to psychology.
Education Research Bulletin (Ohio State University), 1960, 39, 76.
Lecture to Moscow
Psychological Society
(May 6). Personal construct theory as a line of inference. (U.S.S.R.), Academy of Peda-
Lecture presented at Harvard University. gogical Sciences, Moscow.
Published in Pakistan Journal of Psychology, 1964, 1, 80-93. Published in B. Maher (Ed.),
Clinical psychology and personal-
ity: The selected papers of George
Confusion and the clock. Kelly (pp. 94-113). New York: Wiley, 1969.
Ohio State University.
Published in F. Fransella (Ed.), Personal construct psychology 1977 (pp. 209-232). London: Academic Suicide: The personal construct point of view.
Press, 1978. In N. L. Farberow & E. S. Schneidman (Eds.), The cry for help (pp. 255-280). New York:
Italian trans.: La confusione e l'orologio. Costruttivismi, 2015, 2, 20-37. McGraw-Hill, 1961.

The abstraction of human processes.

Paper presented at the 14th International Congress of Applied Psychology, Christiansborg
Castle, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 13-19, 1961.
In G. S. Nielsen & S. Coopersmith (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Applied Psy-
chology, Vol. 2: Personality Research (pp. 220-229). Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962.

1962
A further explanation of the factor analysis of repertory grids.
Ohio State University.

Sin and psychotherapy.

Paper presented at the Temple University symposium on psychotherapy, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, March 9, 1962.
Published in O. H. Mowrer (Ed.), Morality and mental health (pp. 365-381). Chicago: Rand McNally,
1966.
Published in W. Edgar Vinacke (Ed.), Readings in general psychology (pp. 123-139). American Book
Co., 1968.
Reprinted in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp.
165-188). New York: Wiley, 1969.

46
Europe's matrix of decision. The autobiography of a
Paper presented at the 10th annual Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Spring 1962. theory.
In M. R. Jones (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation 1962 (pp. 83-123). Lincoln, NE: University of Ohio State University.
Nebraska Press, 1962. Published in B. Maher (Ed.),
Clinical psychology and personal-
ity: The selected papers of George
Muddles, myths and medicine. Kelly (pp. 46-65). New York:
Review of Thomas S. Szasz, The myth of mental illness: Foundations of a theory of personal conduct. New Wiley, 1969.
York: Harper & Row.
Contemporary Psychology, 1962, 7, 363-365. Clinical psychology at the
Ohio State University: A
Aldous, the personable computer. critical appraisal.
Discussion at a conference on Computer simulation of personality: Frontier of psychological Unpublished manuscript.
theory held at Educational Testing Service and Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 13-15
June, 1962. Nonparametric factor
In S. S. Tomkins & S. Messick (Eds.), Computer simulation of personality: Frontier of psychological theory analysis of personality
(pp. 221-229). New York: Wiley, 1963. theories.
Journal of Individual Psychol-
(March 22). A doctoral program in clinical psychology. ogy, 1963, 19(2), 115-147.
Report to the Department of Psychology, City College of New York. Reprinted in B. Maher (Ed.),
Clinical psychology and personal-
ity: The selected papers of George
(May 13). Innovations in psychotherapy. Kelly (pp. 301-332). New York:
Wiley, 1969.
Contribution to the Symposium on Innovations in Clinical Psychology, New York State
Psychological Association Meetings.
Nursery rhymes for older
tots.
(December 7). In whom confide: On whom depend for what?
Ohio State University.
4th Annual Samuel H. Flowerman Memorial Lecture presented to the New York Society
of Clinical Psychologists.
Published in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp. 1964
189-206). New York: Wiley, 1969.
Evaluation of U. S. Air Force Retraining Program.
Chairman's report of findings of Evaluation Board appointed by U. S. Air Force.
1963
The psychology of the unknown. The language of hypothesis: Man's psychological instrument.
Ohio State University. Address at the American Society of Adlerian Psychology and the Alfred Adler Institute
Published in D. Bannister (Ed.), New perspectives in personal construct theory (pp. 1-19). London: Aca- graduation exercises, New York, May 16th, 1964.
demic Press, 1977.
Published in Journal of Individual Psychology, 1964, 20(2), 137-152.
Reprinted in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp.
Look who's talking. 147-162). New York: Wiley, 1969.
Review of Eric Berne, Transactional analysis in psychotherapy: A systematic individual and social psychiatry. Italian trans.: Il linguaggio dell'ipotesi: lo strumento psicologico dell'uomo. Costruttivismi, 2014, 1,
New York: Grove. 16-27.
Contemporary Psychology, 1963, 8, 189-190.
(May). Personal construct theory: A bibliography.
Psychotherapy and the nature of man. Ohio State University.
Prepared for the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Published in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp. (September 2). Training for professional obsolescence.
207-215). New York: Wiley, 1969.
Paper presented at the Conference of Chief State Psychologists.

47
The strategy of psychological research.
Paper presented at Brunel College, London, on November 18, 1964 in a seminar series on
personal construct theory conducted by Neil Warren, and published in The Theory and Meth-
odology of George Kelly: A Report of the Proceedings of a Symposium on Construct Theory and Reper-
tory Grid Methodology.
Published in Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 1965, 18, 1-15.
Reprinted in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp.
114-132). New York: Wiley, 1969.
The threat of aggression.
Paper presented at a Conference on Humanistic Psychology, Old Saybrook, Connecticut,
November 27-29, 1964.
Published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 1965, 5, 195-201.

[DOI: 10.1177/002216786500500208]
Reprinted in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp.
281-288). New York: Wiley, 1969.
Epilogue: Moments I remember.
1965 Chicago Conference on the Professional Preparation of Clinical Psychologists.
In E. L. Hoch, A. O. Ross & C. L. Winder (Eds.), Professional preparation of clinical psychologists (pp.
97-99). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1966.
Cook, S. W., Bibace, R., Garfield, S., ____, & Wexler, M., Issues in the professional train-
ing of clinical psychologists.
Proceedings of the Conference on the Professional Preparation of Clinical Psychologists
met in Chicago from August 27 to September 1, 1965.
In E. L. Hoch, A. O. Ross & C. L. Winder (Eds.), Professional preparation of clinical psychologists (pp.
29-36). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1966.
Brandeis University Period

1965 1966
Needs and uses of space in clinical psychology. A brief introduction to personal construct theory.
Unpublished manuscript. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University.
Published in J. C. Mancuso (Ed.), Readings for a cognitive theory of personality (pp. 27-58), Holt, Rine-
hart & Winston, New York 1970, with the title “A summary statement of a cognitively-oriented
Space needs for clinical psychology, 1965-1975. comprehensive theory of behavior”.
Unpublished manuscript. Published in D. Bannister (Ed.), Perspectives in personal construct theory (pp. 1-29), Academic Press,
London 1970.
Progress report: Ohio State University's graduate program in clinical psychology. Published in F. Fransella (Ed.), International handbook of personal construct psychology (pp. 3-20),
Wiley, Chichester 2003. [The heading “Scientific behaviour as a paradigm of human behaviour”,
Unpublished manuscript. present in Bannister’s publica-
tion, here is missing]

The psychotherapeutic relationship.

Ontological acceleration.
Paper presented at a symposium on Cognitive and analytic conceptions of the therapeutic relation-
ship. University of Houston, Texas, May 19, 1965. Brandeis University.
Published in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp. Published in B. Maher (Ed.),
216-223). New York: Wiley. Clinical psychology and personal-
ity: The selected papers of George
Kelly (pp. 7-45). New York:
(May). Personal construct theory: A bibliography. Wiley, 1969.
Ohio State University.
Humanistic methodology
in psychological research.
The role of classification in personality theory.
Brandeis University.
Proceedings of the Conference on The Role and Methodology of Classification in Psychiatry and
Psychopathology held in Washington, DC, November 1965. Published in B. Maher (Ed.),
Clinical psychology and personal-
Published in Katz, M. M., Cole, J. O., & W. E. Barton (Ed.), The role and methodology of classification in ity: The selected papers of George
psychiatry and psychopathology (pp. 155-162). Washington, DC: Public Health Service Publication, Kelly (pp. 133-146). New York:
1968. Wiley, 1969.
Reprinted in B. Maher (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly (pp. Also in Journal of Humanistic
289-300). New York: Wiley, 1969. Psychology, 1969, 9(1), 53-65.

[DOI:

48
10.1177/002216786900900103]
1973
A brief autobiographical sketch. Fixed role therapy.
Unpublished manuscript. In R.-R. M. Jurjevich (Ed.), Direct psychotherapy: 28 American originals (pp. 394-422). Coral
Centre for Personal Construct Psychology, University of Hertfordshire. Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1973.
Reprinted in J. E. Groves (Ed.), Essential papers on short-term dynamic therapy (pp. 202-229). New
York: New York University Press, 1996.
Clinical psychology afoot and abroad.
Review of H. David (Ed.), International resources in clinical psychology. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964.
Contemporary Psychology, 1966, 11, 20, 22.

(April 3-7). Behavior is a question.

Unpublished manuscript.
Prepared for presentation at the Xth Inter-American Congress of Psychology, Lima, Peru. Not deliv-
ered because of illness.

(September 4). Behaviour is an experiment.

Invited address, Division of School Psychology, American Psychological Association.
Published in D. Bannister (Ed.), Perspectives in personal construct theory (pp. 255-269). London: Aca-
demic Press, 1970.

(December). Personal construct theory: A bibliography.

Brandeis University.

Experimental dependency.
Brandeis University.

1967
A psychology of the optimal man.
In A. R. Maher (Ed.), The goals of psychotherapy (pp. 238-258). New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, 1967.
Reprinted in A. W. Landfield, & L. M. Leitner (Eds.), Personal construct psychology: Psychotherapy and
personality (pp. 18-35). New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1980.

The complete list of The Writings of George A. Kelly

Posthumous Writings (1905-1967) in APA style can be downloaded by
clicking on this DOI

1969
Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly.
B. Maher (Ed.), New York: Wiley.
Reprinted: Huntington, NY: Krieger, 1979.

49
C HAPTER 6

Personal Construct
Psychology and
Psychotherapy in
the World

Sixty years after its birth, personal construct theory

still represents an heterodoxy in psychology. Notwith-
standing the recent spreading of psychological
constructivism and constructivist psychotherapeutic
approaches, PCT – with its application to the several
fields of psychology and to psychotherapy – keeps its
revolutionary flavour. Its peculiarity makes of PCT a
community with its own literature, journals, con-
gresses, organisations, and web resources.
L ITERATURE
The ever growing number of journal articles, books, book chapters, conference
papers and dissertations makes the collection of references particularly useful for
PCP researchers and practitioners.
It was Kelly himself who started the practice in 1964 by drawing up a bibliogra-
phy, then updated in 1965 and 1966. Besides, Kelly gradually evolved a mailing
roster, dubbed the “Magpie List,” consisting of persons to whom he periodically
mailed manuscripts and items of interest pertaining to his work. As of July 2nd,
1964, a list with sixty-two members was founded. It quickly expanded, doubling
in size over the next three years. [N1985:89]
After Kelly’s death in 1967, Alvin W. Landfield, one of his earliest students, came
up with the idea of starting a Clearing House, a Library, where references would
be sent. Once he obtained the Magpie List from Mrs. Gladys Kelly, Landfield
started to send the references to the Members of the Clearing House at the end of
each year. Following the first International Conference in 1975, the Clearing
House annual letter was used also to announce the site of the next International
Congress. Within several years, the list had expanded to about two hundred, rep-
resenting twenty-four countries. [L2011:15]
I NTERNATIONAL C ONGRESSES
In 1974 Al Landfield was asked to organise a Nebraska Symposium devoted to
PCP. The Nebraska Symposiums on Motivation have been organised yearly by the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln since 1953. As told in Section 3, Kelly was invited
as a speaker in the 1962 symposium.
Landfield planned to hold the International Conference in the fall semester of
1975. Invited speakers were some of the most prominent people writing on PCP
during that period: Don Bannister, England; Miller Mair, Scotland; Han Bonarius,
the Netherlands; Jim Mancuso, SUNY at Albany; Seymour Rosenberg, Rutgers
University; Landfield himself, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and Theodore Sar-
bin, University of California (not committed to PCP, but a friend of Jim Mancuso).
Sarbin read the opening lecture. The Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1976
was later known as the First International Congress on PCP.

I too in 1990, enabled by an Apple II personal computer, drew up a list of Refer-

ences in Personal Construct Psychology & Psychotherapy. The list, unpublished but
available upon request, includes about 1700 published and 140 unpublished
works. An updated edition in 1996, Personal construct psychology & psychother-
apy: A bibliography, reports about 2200 published and 300 unpublished works. It
is still available online at the Oikos website.

Beverly M. Walker, an important member of the Australasian Kellian community,

offered to spread the above bibliography via the internet, so that a larger number
of people interested in PCP can easily consult it and contribute with the report of
new references. The PCP Reference Database has been hosted by the Personal
Construct Group at the website of the University of Wollongong, Australia, but it
is no longer working.

Harry Procter continues to add to a list of PCP references to children and education
originally compiled by Fay Fransella.

From left: Seymour Rosenberg, Alvin W. Landfield, Don Bannister, James C. Mancuso, Han
Bonarius, and Miller Mair, the speakers at the Nebraska Symposium 1976 on PCP.
By permission of the Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

51
Since then, an International Congress on PCP has been organised every two years.
C ONTINENTAL O RGANISATIONS AND C ONFERENCES

1st Lincoln, NE, USA 1975 12th Seattle, WA, USA 1997 Following the spreading of PCP worldwide, three international organisations were
2nd Oxford, UK 1977 13th Berlin, Germany 1999 founded in order to facilitate communication among members and the organisa-
tion of local conferences and international congresses.
3rd Breukelen, Holland 1979 14th Wollongong, Australia 2001

4th St. Catherines, Canada 1981 15th Huddersfield, UK 2003

5th Boston, MA, USA 1983 16th Columbus, OH, USA 2005 The North American Personal Construct Network (NAPCN) was founded in 1984,
6th Cambridge, UK 1985 17th Brisbane, Australia 2007
and became the Constructivist Psychology Network (CPN) in 2004.

7th Memphis, TN, USA 1987 18th Venice, Italy 2009 CPN has published a news-
letter, the Constructivist
8th Assisi, Italy 1989 19th Boston, MA, USA 2011
Chronicle, since 1997.
9th Albany, NY, USA 1991 20th Sydney, Australia 2013
The Constructivist Psy-
10th Townsville, Australia 1993 21th Hatfield, UK 2015
chology Network organ-
11th Barcelona, Spain 1995 22nd Montreal, Canada 2017 ised the following biennial
conferences starting from
1984:

1st Cincinnati, OH, USA 1984 9th New Paltz, NY, USA 2000

2nd Banff, Canada 1986 10th Vancouver, BC, Canada 2002

3rd Lincoln, NE, USA 1988 11th Memphis, TN, USA 2004

4th San Antonio, TX, USA 1990 12th San Marcos, CA, USA 2006

5th Seattle, WA, USA 1992 13th Victoria, BC, Canada 2008

6th Indianapolis, IN, USA 1994 14th Niagara Falls, NY, USA 2010

7th Banff, Canada 1996 15th Arlington, TX, USA 2012

8th Denton, TX, USA 1998 16th Vancouver, BC, Canada 2014

Photo G. Chiari

52
The Australasian Personal Construct Group (APCG) is closely related to the
Personal Construct Psychology Interest Group of the Australian
U NIVERSITY O RGANISATIONS AND P RIVATE C ENTRES
Psychological Society. Its members live in Australia and New U NITED S TATES
Zealand.
In the USA, Canada, Israel and Australia, study, research and training centres be-
gan to take form in some Universities, some thanks to people who had studied
The Group issues the APCG Newletter and has organised
with Kelly. Among them were some of the “Thursday Nighters”, who had at-
biennial conferences since 1983.
tended the informal meetings in Kelly’s home, such as Al Landfield, Rue Crom-
well, Franz Epting and Brendan Maher, who had a prominent role.
1st Wollongong 1983 9th Bendigo 2000
Alvin W. Landfield, particularly interested in psy-
2nd Perth 1984 10th Sydney 2002 chotherapy, formed PCT groups, first at the Univer-
3rd Melbourne 1986 11th Melbourne 2004 sity of Missouri–Co-
lumbia (1956-
4th Wollongong 1988 12th Wollongong 2006 1972) then at the
5th Adelaide 1990 13th Melbourne 2008 University of Ne-
braska–Lincoln.
6th Sydney 1992 14th Wollongong 2010 Under his teach-
7th Canberra 1996 15th Hunter Valley 2012 ing, Nebraska
graduated two
8th Brisbane 1998 16th students, Larry
M. Leitner and
Robert A. Ne- Alvin W. Landfield in 1975
imeyer. Both had
The European Personal Construct Association (EPCA) was cre- been undergradu-
ated in 1990 and edited for some years its own Newsletter. ate students of
Larry M. Leitner Franz Epting in
The Association organised or sponsored the following bien-
Florida and were
nial conferences:
destined to give
important contri-
1st York, UK 1992 8th Kristianstad, Sweden 2006 butions to PCT.
Leitner will be-
2nd St. Andreasberg, Germ. 1994 9th London, UK 2008 come professor
3rd Reading, UK 1996 10th Belgrade, Serbia 2010 of clinical psy-
chology at Miami
4th Chester, UK 1998 11th Dublin, Ireland 2012 University, and
5th Malta 2000 12th Brno, Czech Republic 2014 Neimeyer, profes-
sor in the Depart-
6th Firenze, Italy 2002 13th Padua, Italy 2016 Robert A. Neimeyer
ment of Psychol-
7th Stuttgart, Germany 2004 14th Edinburgh, Scotland 2018 ogy at the Univer-
sity of Memphis and editor (with Greg. J. Ne-
Franz R. Epting imeyer, of the Department of Psychology of the

53
University of Florida at Gainesville) of the International Journal of Personal Construct Psy- research program in social cognition and interper-
chology, and then editor-in-chief of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology. sonal communication.

Franz R. Epting moved from Ohio State to the University of Florida at Gainesville in
1967, where he established research programs in such areas as cognitive complex-
ity, death and dying, and parent-child interaction, attracting many students. A
graduate exchange program with the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands fa-
voured the birth of a Dutch network, headed by
Han Bonarius. Epting is the current President of
the George Kelly Society.
In the early 1950s, under Kelly’s supervision,
Rue Cromwell
wrote a thesis on
conceptual clus-
tering. While pro-
fessor since 1972
and later chief of
the Division of
Psychiatry at the
Rue Cromwell University of Roch-
ester, his interest
in grid technique
produced, in collaboration with L. G. Space, so-
phisticated, computer-based, interactive pro-
grams for eliciting and analysing grids. Their col-
laboration with Peter Dingemans, from the Uni-
versity of James C. Mancuso (1928-2005)
Utrecht, allowed
i m p o r t a n t r e-
search on the construing processes of schizo-
phrenics.
Other US research groups were built by psycholo-
gists who never studied directly with Kelly but
discovered PCT through their reading of his
work. Among them is James C. Mancuso, who
joined the State University of New York–Albany in
1961 showing a special interest in child develop-
ment and parent training. Another is Walter
Crockett, professor of social psychology at the
Walter Crockett
University of Kansas since 1968, who developed a
The work of Spencer A. McWilliams, former
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the
California State University San Marcos, addresses sev-
eral themes such
as PCP, Zen medi-
tation and Bud-
dhist psychology
in their relation
with social con-
Spencer A. McWilliams
structionism and
other post-
modern pespec-
tives.
The current President of the North American Con-
structivist Psychology Network, Kenneth W. Sew-
ell, Kansas State Kenneth W. Sewell
University alum-
nus, is Vice Presi-
dent for Research at Oklahoma State University in
Stillwater. His research has focused on post-
traumatic stress and bereavement.
Professor of Psychology and Counseling at the
State University of New York at New Paltz, Jonathan
D. Raskin, managing editor of the Journal of Con-
structivist Psychology, studies psychology and coun-
Jonathan D. Raskin seling from a constructivist perspective – often
using George Kelly’s PCT and von Glasersfeld’s
radical constructivism –, but also incorporating
aspects of social constructionism, narrative therapy, solution-focused therapy, and
other constructivist approaches. He is also editor (with Sara K. Bridges) of the
book series Studies in meaning.

54
U NITED K INGDOM
The spreading of PCP in Europe is undoubtedly
due to Don Bannister. He was born in 1928 in a
mining village in Yorkshire, graduated in psychol-
ogy at the University of Manchester in 1954, and
completed his training as a clinical psychologist
at the Maudsley Hospital. Bannister read Kelly’s
two volumes in the library of the Institute of Psy-
chiatry in London in 1957 and realised it was the
only psychology that was about the individual per-
son. In 1959 he wrote his thesis putting forward
an hypothesis on schizophrenic thought disorder Don Bannister (1924-1986)
based on PCT. He tested his hypothesis by work-
ing with people diagnosed as suffering from
schizophrenia while head of the department of Clinical Psychology at Bexley Hospi-
tal in Kent and, from the late 1970s until his death aged 62, at High Royds Hospital
in his native Yorkshire.
One of Bannister’s earliest associates was Phil-
lida Salmon, who worked with him in Bexley
Hospital since 1961. Even though she was an in-
dependent thinker, never an orthodox Kellian, she
had been a
central figure
in the spread-
ing of PCP in
Europe.
But beyond
his scientific
Phillida Salmon (1933-2005) contributions
Bannister was
a challenging
and witty spreader of PCT, through his lec-
tures and his writings. In 1968 he wrote The
Evaluation of Personal Constructs with Miller
Mair, his Scottish friend. In 1971 he joined
Fay Fransella to write Inquiring Man, still the
best introductory account of Kelly’s theory. In
1977, again with Fay Fransella, he wrote a
manual of repertory grid techniques. Moreo-
ver, he edited several books on PCP and four nov-
els which received a warm welcome from literary
critics.
An educational psychologist who adopted PCP
from Bannister whilst a student at the University
of London was Tom Ravenette. He adopted
many techniques and probing questions to aid
clinicians, teachers and others to understand how
children and young people made sense of their
worlds.
Ravenette’s work on the application of PCP to Tom Ravenette (1924-2005)
young people has been carried on by Richard J.
Butler – who in turn undertook clinical practice
at High Royds Hospital working alongside Bannister – and David Green, both of
them practicing and teaching at the University of
Leeds.
Miller Mair was another prominent figure of the
Kellian community. Director of psychological serv-
ices and research at the Crichton Royal Hospital in
the region of Dumfries and Galloway, he advo-
cated PCP as a storytelling psychology, the latter
being his way of
thinking of the
very discipline of
psychology itself.
Miller Mair (1937-2011) It was under the
super vision of
Miller Mair at
Crichton Royal that Peter Cummins first encoun-
tered PCP in action in 1974, before going to work
at Bexley Hospital as the last person appointed by
Don Bannister before Don moved to Yorkshire.
Cummins stayed there until 1992, and then Peter Cummins
moved to the Coventry Primary Care Trust. His re-
cent interest is in the treatment of anger.
55
The first private group or- fordshire at Hatfield, where all the
ganised around Kelly ’s activities were moved. The li-
ideas has probably been brary now forms the basis of the
the Centre for Personal Fransella and Miller Mair PCP
Construct Psychology Collections, held at the Univer-
founded by Fay Fransella
in London in 1981 (see sity of Hert-
also Chapter 5). If it were fordshire in
Fay Fransella (1925-2011) its Learning
Resource
Centre at
not for Don Bannister, many think that there Hatfield.
would have been no Centre at all. The Centre
offered workshops and distant learning courses
on PCP for years, was accepted by the UK
Council for Psychotherapy as an organisational The Centre’s
Nick Reed
member, published a quarterly newsletter, Con- free newslet-
ter is called
The Construc-
Peggy Dalton (1932-2012) tivist Interven-
tionist.
structs, up to 1989, and owned
a collection of personal Recently, Win-
construct books, journals, and ter and Reed
the vast majority of Kelly’s un- edited The Wiley handbook of personal construct psy-
published manuscripts. chology, which updates the state-of-the-art of PCP
thirteen years after the International handbook of
Peggy Dalton was one of the personal construct psychology edited by Fransella in
first students of the Centre. 2003. Winter, in turn introduced to PCT thanks David A. Winter
Coming from theater, she to a lecture of
worked on stammering, in part- Don Bannister,
nership with Fay Fransella. She was also the author in 1992 of Personal construct
wrote two introductory books psychology in clinical practice, which extensively re-
on PCP, one with Fransella and views the applications of PCT in the clinical field,
one with Gavin Dunnett. and is associate editor of the Journal of Constructiv-
ist Psychology.
By 2005, thanks to two promi-
nent figures of the PCP commu- A visiting professor of the same University of Hert-
nity, Nick Reed and David A. fordshire at Hatfield is Harry Procter. Procter
Winter, the Centre found a took a PhD at the University of Bristol in 1978
new home at the School of Psy- with a thesis on PCT and family, and since then
chology of the University of Hert- Harry Procter has been working on the application of PCP to

56
 children and families, on qualitative grids, and, leadership development, and his interest in the
more recently, on the affinities between pragma- process of personal transition in PCP terms.
tism (mainly Peirce) and Kelly. Fisher organized in 1998 the EPCA conference in
Chester together with David Savage, Director of
Another important centre for the spreading of Applied Psychology , Physical Education & Sports
PCP in the UK is the University of Huddesfield. Here Science Department at the University College of Ches-
Trevor Butt taught, who approached PCP after ter and expert in sport psychology.
having met Don Bannister, who later become a
close friend and mentor. Butt was able to gain a M a r y Fr a n c e s ,
PhD by publication, which was examined by Phil- after a degree in John Fisher
lida Salmon in 1998. He extended the theoretical psychology at the
framework of University of Lon-
Trevor W. Butt (1947-2015)
PCT by elaborat- don in 1985, obtained a diploma in Personal
ing some of its Construct Psychology at the Centre for PCP in
central features 1990. She works with individuals, groups and or-
in the light of phenomenology and pragmatism. ganisations from a constructivist perspective, and
His collaboration with Vivien Burr, who joined her interests include collaborative working, alter-
the department at Huddesfield in 1983, produced native approaches to leadership, action research,
many joint publications showing a social vision of storytelling and
PCP, also thanks narrative, and
to Burr’s familiar- many aspects of
ity with social Vivien Burr Mary Frances personal and pro-
constructionism. fessional change
Burr is also co- and transition.
editor (with Jörn Scheer and in place of Butt) of
the online journal Nelarine Cornelius is professor of organisation
Personal Construct Theory studies at the School of Business and Manage-
& Practice. ment of the Queen Mary University of London. Her
areas of interest include identity management and
Nelarine Cornelius
The field of educational social justice, and business research methods, in-
Maureen Pope psychology is especially cluding constructivist methods.
thriving thanks to two
psychologists who Other local groups in the UK are the Coventry Constructivist Centre, and the York
taught at the University of Reading and are now Emeritus PCP Group headed by Helen Jones.
Professors: Maureen Pope and Pam Denicolo. Their
research on the application of PCP and constructivist
research methods in education led to numerous books, Pam Denicolo
chapters, journal articles and conference papers in
these fields.

The biography of John Fisher, from aircraft radars to simulation engineering, up

to business psychology, explains his being an expert in change management and

57
C ANADA
Jack R. Adams-Webber
names of Brian R. Gaines and Mil-
dred L. G. Shaw who carry on a
sophisticated research program on
knowledge acquisition for expert
systems based on personal
construct technology at the Depart-
ment of Computer Science of the Univer-
sity of Calgary. They developed Web-
Grid Plus, a free online service for
the elicitation and analysis of reper-
tory grids.
I SRAEL
Devorah Kalekin-Fishman
A USTRALIA
The spreading of PCT in Australia is mainly asso-
The Canadian contributions to PCT are primarily ciated to the School of Psychology of the Univer-
due to Jack R. Adams-Webber, who began his sity of Wollongong. Here, Linda Viney had moved
dissertation under Kelly’s supervision at Ohio in 1980 with her enthusiasm for Kelly’s ideas em-
State University in 1964, and accompanied him braced ten years before, and here, as departmen-
when he moved to Brandeis University in 1965. tal head, she set up a Personal Construct Research
After Kelly’s death, Adams-Webber joined Don group in 1981, which met regularly for over 30
Bannister’s work on schizophrenia for two years, years. The group fostered the formation of the
and lastly joined the psychology faculty at Brock Australasian
University at St. Catharines in 1970. Personal Construct
Group and the Linda L. Viney (1942-2014)
Another university centre in Canada is tied to the
publication of its
newsletter, and
obtained the rec-
ognition of a
Personal Construct
Psychology Interest
Group by the Aus-
tralian
Psychological So-
ciety.
Beverly M. Walker
Mildred L. G. Shaw and Brian R. Gaines A prominent
member of the Peter Caputi
group is Beverly
M. Walker, who
wrote extensively in PCP
Another psychologist who graduated with Kelly
giving fundamental contri-
at Ohio State University in 1966 is Michaela Lif-
bution to the notion of dis-
shitz. In 1973 she assumed faculty status at the
persion of dependency and
University of Haifa, Israel, where she instituted a
to the utilization of the
research program on psychosocial problems, inter-
dependency grid. She is
rupted by her early death in 1979. At the same
also co-editor (with Jörn
university Devorah Kalekin-Fishman carries on
Scheer) of the Internet Ency-
for years the presence of PCT in Israel showing a
c l o p a e d i a o f Pe r s o n a l Bill Warren
special interest in the broad theme of human
Construct Psychology.
rights in late modernity.
Another member of the group is Peter Caputi,
mainly interested in organisational psychology ac-
Richard C. Bell cording to a PCP approach.
58
The Australian PCP network is enriched by mem-
bers working in other universities. Among them,
Bill Warren, from the Faculty of Education of the
University of Newcastle, mainly interested in the
philosophical roots of PCT; and Richard C. Bell,
from the Department of Psychology of the Univer-
sity of Melbourne, expert on the analysis of reper-
tory grids and their computerized analysis.
N ORWAY
Also Norway has an authoritative representative
of PCP in the person of Finn Tschudi, who spent
his professional life in psychology at the Univer-
sity of Oslo. Tschudi introduced the ABC model,
and is now actively involved in restorative justice.
Sean Brophy was a management consultant and
author in private practice in Dublin, with experi-
ence in Ireland, the UK, the Middle East, the
West Indies, and the United States.
I TALY
Again, it was Bannister who spread PCP in Italy,
through the reading of Inquiring man first, and
then through two invitations made by a group of Sean Brophy (1943-2017)
former students of Vittorio Guidano. Since then,
two members of that group, Maria Laura Nuzzo
and Gabriele Chiari, applied themselves to the study, the pratice and the teach-
Finn Tschudi ing of PCT and psychotherapy for all of their professional lives.

I RELAND
Ireland too shows the presence of PCP, again
through the teaching of Bannister and Fransella.
It is with them that Bernadette O’Sullivan
trained as a personal construct psychotherapist in
London in the 1970s. Returned to Ireland she to-
gether with a group of colleagues founded in the
mid-1980s the Vico Consultation Centre, a sys-
temic constructivist psychotherapy practice, thus
introducing PCP to Irish family therapy. Construc-
tivist therapy is
now one of the five
Bernadette O’Sullivan
sections recognized
by the Irish Council
for Psychotherapy. Maria Laura Nuzzo, Don Bannister and Gabriele Chiari in 1984

A great contribution to the spreading of PCP world-

After the first private courses, the Italian law on the regulation of psychological
wide is given also by Vincent Kenny, as Director of
and psychotherapeutic activities came into force in 1993 allowed the ministerial
the Institute of Constructivist Psychotherapy in Ireland,
recognition of private Schools of specialisation in psychotherapy and, among
Director of Psychotherapy Training at the Depart-
them, of the School of specialisation in Constructivist Psychotherapy of CESIPc in Flor-
ment of Psychiatry, University College, Dublin, as edi-
ence. Since then, a course of specialisation in personal construct psychotherapy –
tor of the website Towards an ecology of mind and
and, later, in hermeneutic constructivist psychotherapy, the term given to our elabora-
member of the editorial board of Constructivist Foun-
tion of it – has started each year in the seats of Florence and Padua headed by
dations.
Vincent Kenny Nuzzo and myself and, after Nuzzo’s early death in 2005, by myself and our col-

59
 laborators. In the University of Pisa, a specialist in communication
1997, together in the fields of literature, personal relationships and
with other col- therapy, teacher in both the Schools of Florence and
leagues of CE- Padua; Maria Armezzani, associate professor at the
SIPc, we Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Applied
founded the Psychology of the University of Padua, a phenomenolo-
Italian Associa- gist interested in the affinities between PCT and phe-
tion of Construc- nomenology; Sabrina Cipolletta, Department of
tivist Psychology General Psychology of the University of Padua, re-
and Psychother- searcher in health psychology. Both Armezzani and
Maria Laura Nuzzo (1946-2005) apy (AIPPC), Cipolletta were trained in personal construct psycho-
which edits therapy by Chiari and Nuzzo and are teachers of the
the online jour- School of specialisation in Constructivist Psychother- Sabrina Cipolletta
nal Constructivisms. apy of CESIPc.
Gabriele Chiari

A former student Due to its regulation for the training of psychotherapists and the presence of two
of Chiari and Schools of specialisation, it is likely that Italy has the highest number of personal
Nuzzo, Massimo Giliberto, founded in 2004 in construct psychotherapists in the world.
Padua the Institute of Constructivist Psychology, seat of
another PCP-oriented School of Constructivist Psycho- G ERMANY
therapy recognised by the ministry of education. The
Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Stuttgart, Martin
Institute edits the Italian Journal of Constructivism, and
Fromm is trained as a clinical psychologist and is the author of several publica-
is among the promoters of the European Constructivist
tions about PCP and methodology.
Training Network (ECTN) together with the Serbian
Constructivist Association, and joined by the British The contribution to PCP of Jörn W. Scheer, Emeri-
Massimo Giliberto Personal Construct Psychology Association (PCPA) which tus Professor of Medical Psychology at the Univer-
in turn organizes its training in constructivist psy- sity of Giessen, spreads far beyond the German bor-
chotherapy leading to the registration as a psycho- der. Since the 1980s he has edited a number of
therapist with UKCP. books, is co-editor of the Internet Encyclopaedia of
Personal Construct
An important contribution to the introduction of
Psychology and of
PCP at an academic level was given by Gabriele
the online journal
Chiari as lecturer
Personal Construct
at the Faculty of
Theory & Practice,
Psychology of the
maintains The PCP
University of Flor- Martin Fromm Gateway that in-
ence (2004-2011),
cludes the PCP
and is still given
NewsBlog, and re-
by Carmen
cently has been the promoter of the foundation of
Dell’Aversano,
the George Kelly Society, in which he occupies the
of the English
Maria Armezzani Carmen Dell’Aversano position of Information Officer. Jörn W. Scheer
Department of
60
S PAIN Gothenburgh teaches Britt-Marie Apelgren,
whose primary research field concerns teachers'
Another European country with important contributors to PCP is Spain. One of
and students' perceptions and experiences of lan-
them, Guillem Feixas Viaplana, is professor in
guage teaching from a constructivist theoretical
the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Barce-
framework, primarily influenced by personal
lona. He is especially interested in implicative di-
construct psychology.
lemmas as revealed by the analysis of repertory
grids, a project also carried on by the Group of Con-
structivist Psycho-
therapy at the Uni-
versity of Sala-
manca. The
Britt-Marie Apelgren
other, Luis Bo-
tella, is professor At Kristianstad Uni-
in the Faculty of versity teaches
Guillem Feixas Viaplana Psychology of the Marie-Louise Österlind, a researcher in the field
University Ramon of education inspired by the theories of “the reflec-
Llull in Barcelona, tive practitioner”, personal construct psychology
and is interested in the integration between narra- and phenomenology.
tive and personal construct psychotherapy. Luis Botella

S ERBIA
Also the above mentioned Serbian Constructivist Association, born in 1995, organizes
Marie-Louise Österlind
courses in constructivist counseling and psychotherapy under the direction of
Dušan Stojnov, professor at the Psychology De-
partment of the University of Belgrade, thus contrib- The colleagues I chose to mention in the above survey represent only part of the
uting to the spreading of PCP in Serbia. worldwide community who have contributed and are still actively contributing to
the spreading of PCP.
At the University of Belgrade studied Jelena Pav-
lović, Director of the Koučing centar, who is one of They are all colleagues I have had the chance to know either personally or through
the leaders of their writings. I look forward to having the opportunity to meet many more in the
coaching psychol- near future.
ogy, in Serbia,
according to a
PCP approach.
Dušan Stojnov

S WEDEN
Jelena Pavlović
At the Faculty of Education of the University of

61
 death in 2015, Viv Burr succeeded as co-
J OURNALS editor.
Don Bannister was against the idea of a jour-
nal specifically devoted to PCP, afraid this Both the two Italian groups of PCP and
could aggravate the condition of isolation personal construct psychotherapy have
which the Kellian community was suffering, their own journal.
given the radical peculiarity of its theory of
reference. In Bannister’s opinion, it would The Institute of Constructivist Psychology in
have been better had PCPers published their Padua edits since 2012 the six-monthly e-
papers in journals open to various ap- journal Rivista Italiana di Costruttivismo. The
proaches, so as to introduce a wider reader- Managing Director is Massimo Giliberto,
ship to Kelly’s ideas. Anyway, in 1988 the the Scientific Director Francesco Veli-
first issue of the International Journal of Personal cogna, the Executive Director Luca
Construct Psychology was published, initially by Pezzullo, the Editor-in-chief Chiara Cen-
Hemisphere Publishing Corporation and after- tomo. A free registration is required to
wards by the Taylor and Francis group, edited access the journal.The Associazione Italiana
by Robert A. Neimeyer and Greg J. Neimeyer. di Psicologia e Psicoterapia Costruttivista (AIPPC) edits since 2014 the six-monthly e-
journal Construttivismi. The Editors-in-chief are Gabriele Chiari and Lorenzo Cion-
In 1994 the journal was renamed Journal of Constructivist Psychology to allow contri- ini (co-directors of the School of specialization in constructivist psychotherapy of CESIPc,
butions from other constructivist perspectives. As stated in its aims and scope, with seats in Florence and Padua), and the Assistant Editor and Managing Editor
“The Journal of Constructivist Psychology is the first publication to provide a pro- is Clarice Ranfagni. The journal publishes articles on PCP and other constructiv-
fessional forum for such diverse expressions of constructivism as personal ist approaches in Italian and English. A free registration is required to access the
construct theory, dialogical self theory, radical constructivism, social construction- journal.
ism, narrative psychology, and postmodern psychology.”

Currently, Robert A. Neimeyer is the Editor-

in-chief, Jonathan D. Raskin the Managing Edi-
tor, and David Winter the Associate Editor.

In 2004 Jörn Scheer started the online journal

Personal Construct Theory & Practice. This journal
publishes papers on personal construct theory
as well as its applications in a variety of disci-
plines, such as psychotherapy and counsel-
ling, education, and organisational behaviour.
It also serves as a forum for practitioners in
the various professions involved. Contribu-
tions to the journal are peer-reviewed and the
access is free.

For several years Trevor Butt has helped

Scheer as co-editor of the journal. After Butt’s

62
T HE G EORGE K ELLY S OCIETY

The George Kelly Society (GKS) is a multidis-

ciplinary professional society which sup-
ports the study of, and communication
about, the life and work of George Alexan-
der Kelly (1905-1967), the Psychology of
Personal Constructs, and Kelly's ongoing
influence in the many fields to which he
contributed. It was founded in June, 2016.

The focus of the organisation is the Psychology of Personal Constructs, its theo-
retic developments and practical applications, and its relationships to neighbour-
ing fields.

Membership is open to anyone interested in the life and work of George Kelly and
the Psychology of Personal Constructs. Presently, there is no membership fee.

To become a member, please send the Membership Application Form to the Secre-
tary.

Steering Committee

President: Prof. Franz Epting, Gainesville, Florida, USA


Vice-President: Prof. David Winter, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK

Secretary/Treasurer: Dr. Desley Hennessy, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Information Officer: Prof. Jörn Scheer, Hamburg, Germany

Members-at-large:

Dr.ssa Chiara Centomo, Padua, Italy

Prof. Gabriele Chiari, Florence, Italy

Peter Cummins, MA, Coventry, UK

63
The Author

GABRIELE CHIARI, MD chartered psychotherapist, is

co-director and teacher at the School of Specialization
in Constructivist Psychotherapy at CESIPc, Florence,
Italy. He introduced personal construct theory in Italy
in the early 80's and since then has trained about two
hundred psychotherapists and contributed to the
spreading of Kelly's ideas at an academic level. A mem-
ber of the editorial boards of the Journal of Constructiv-
ist Psychology and Personal Construct Theory & Practice
since their first issue, co-editor of the e-journal Costrut-
tivismi, and member-at-large of the George Kelly Society,
he has published extensively on constructivist episte-
mology, theory and practice. His latest book in English
(together with the late Maria Laura Nuzzo) is Constructivist psychotherapy: A narra-
tive hermeneutic approach, published by Routledge in 2010.

www.gabrielechiari.it

64
Acceptance
A willingness to see the world through the other person's eyes. [K1955:373]

One might even say that the psychology of personal constructs is, among other things, a psychology of acceptance. [K1955:373]

Acceptance does not mean seeking mere commonality of ideas between clinician and client, it means seeking a way of subsuming the
construct system of the client. [K1955:374]

Everyone ultimately seems to want acceptance from others, provided it can be an acceptance of the kind of self which is acceptable to one-
self. [K1955:390]

[Acceptance] involves not so much the approval of the client's view of himself as it does the readiness to utilize the client's modes of ap-
proach his system of axes, his reference points, his ways of approaching problems. The therapist attempts to employ the client's construct
system, though not to be encapsulated by it. [K1955:587]

[Acceptance is] a function of the clinician's conceptualization of his role rather than as a therapeutic technique. The accepting therapist
tries earnestly to put himself in the client's shoes, but at the same time seeks to maintain a professional overview of the client's problems.
This means that in accepting the client the therapist makes an effort to understand him in his the client's own terms, and that, also, he sub-
sumes a major portion of the client's construction under his the therapist's own professional constructs. [K1955:649]

Acceptance has been defined as the willingness to see the world through the client's eyes. It might be more precisely defined as the thera-
pist's attempt to employ the client's own personal construct system. In terms of our Commonality Corollary, acceptance is the movement of
the therapist's mental processes in the construed direction of commonality with the client’s construct system. [K1955:1049]

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Aggression
see Aggressiveness

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Aggressiveness
Aggressiveness is the active elaboration of one's perceptual field. [K1955:508]

There are some persons who are distinguished by their greater tendency to set up choice points in their lives and then to make their elabora-
tive choices. They are always precipitating themselves and others into situations which require decision and action. We call them aggres-
sive.
Within the realm of the individual there are those areas in which he is likely to be more aggressive than in others. These are the areas in
which the person "does things." Some psychologists might describe these areas as "interest areas." Within such areas the person appears to
be neither shy nor lazy. He moves through them with initiative and relative freedom. [K1955:508-09]

In the psychology of personal constructs we make a clear distinction between aggressiveness and hostility. A person is aggressive if he is
active in formulating testable hypotheses and in trying them out to see what happens. If he insists on laying uncollectable wagers or if he
procrastinates in looking for validational evidence, he is passive. Aggression may therefore be as much intellectual as motoric. [K1955:604]

Aggression is often the most promising solution for hostility. The trick is to channelize the aggression. This means the development of ap-
propriate two-ended constructs. The drastic alternatives which seem, under the client's system of constructs, to be the only other choices
open to him must be replaced by reconstruing the situation in more discriminating terms. [K1955:875]

Aggression may eventuate in guilt because it may lead to misadventures in elaborating one's role constructs. The novel role relations one
aggressively seeks to establish may collapse. Aggression in the area of role relations may thus lead quite directly to guilt. [K1955:878]

Related Glossary Terms

Guilt, Hostility, Transition

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Anticipation
Anticipation is both the push and pull of the psychology of personal constructs. [K1955:49]

Anticipation is not merely carried on for its own sake; it is carried on so that future reality may be better represented. It is the future which
tantalizes man, not the past. Always he reaches out to the future through the window of the present. [K1955:49]
Since we have postulated that all human movement is based on anticipations, the choice of an alternative through which to move is itself a
matter of what one anticipates. [K1955:66]

Where Dewey would have said that we understand events through anticipating them, we would add that our lives are wholly oriented to-
ward the anticipation of events. [K1955:157]

If man is concerned primarily with the anticipation of events, we need no longer appeal to hedonism, or some disguised form of it, such as
“satisfaction” or “reinforcement” to explain his behavior. [K1955:158]

Related Glossary Terms

Choice Corollary, Experience Cycle, Fundamental Postulate, Range Corollary, Validation/
Invalidation

Index Find Term

Anxiety
Anxiety is the recognition that the events with which one is confronted lie outside the range of convenience of one’s
construct system. [K1955:495]

Of course, if events lay entirely outside the range of convenience of one's construct system he could not even perceive them, nor could he be
specifically anxious about them. What happens is that the anxious person has found that he has partially lost his structural grip on events.
He is caught in the confusion of anxiety. [K1955:495]

People protect themselves against anxiety in various ways. One way is in a loosening of one's constructs. [...] Its protective effect can be
seen in the thinking of certain schizophrenic clients. The conceptualization is so loosened that they seem to have a system that still covers
everything. They are not caught short of constructs. But what constructs! [K1955:497]

Sometimes one reveals the imminence of anxiety by exhibiting another kind of protective behavior. One may tighten his subordinate con-
structs and thus maintain a greater measure of organization at the lower levels of his system. He may become more meticulous about the
little routines of living. A man whose home life is losing structure may spend more time at the office. He may work out his office routine in
a highly structured manner. The effect of this type of protective step is usually to block the readjustive changes which might follow from
being anxious for a while. He does not "face his problems"; hence he does not find new solutions for them. [K1955:498]

From the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs, anxiety, per se, is not to be classified as either good or bad. It represents the
awareness that one's construction system does not apply to the events at hand. It is, therefore, a precondition for making revisions.
[K1955:498]

Anxiety is confusion in one's construction system. It ranges from the little momentary bafflements of everyday living to the "free-floating
anxiety" which betrays a breakdown in superordinate structures. [K1955:508]

A person caught in an anxiety situation may construe impulsively in order to bring some semblance of structure to bear upon his problems.
[K1955:527]

Related Glossary Terms

Transition

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

C-P-C Cycle
The C-P-C Cycle is a sequence of construction involving, in succession, circumspection, preemption, and control,
and leading to a choice which precipitates the person into a particular situation. [K1955:565]

The C-P-C Cycle (Circumspection-Preemption-Control Cycle) has to do with decision making in which the self is involved. [K1955:514]

The C-P-C Cycle, then, starts with circumspection, which enables the person to look at his elements propositionally, or in a multidimen-
sional manner. But because he cannot, to quote a classic phrase, "mount his horse and ride off in all directions," he must choose the most
relevant axis along which to construe his situation. He therefore selects what he believes to be the crucial issue and temporarily or perma-
nently disregards the relevancy of all the other issues that may be involved. Thus, by preemption, he sets up a choice point, a crossroads of
decision. [...] But the C-P-C Cycle does not end with preemption. There is still the choice to be made. Indeed, the final "C" in our term
might stand for choice as well as for control. As we have indicated before in our Choice Corollary, a person chooses for himself that alterna-
tive in a dichotomized construct through which he anticipates the greater possibility for extension and definition of his system.
[K1955:516-17]

Related Glossary Terms

Choice Corollary, Circumspection, Control, Impulsivity, Preemption, Propositional Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Choice Corollary
A person chooses for himself that alternative in a dichotomized construct through which he anticipates the greater
possibility for extension and definition of his system. [K1955:64]

The Choice Corollary lays down the grounds upon which we can make some predictions regarding how people will act after they have con-
strued the issues with which they are faced. [K1955:67]

Under the Choice Corollary we are able to reconstrue some of the issues for which hedonism and motivational theory provide awkward an-
swers. Stimulus-response theory requires some sorts of assumptions to explain why certain responses become linked to certain stimuli. In
certain theoretical structures this is managed by some supplementary theorizing about the nature of motives or need satisfactions. But in
our assumptive structure we do not specify, nor do we imply, that a person seeks "pleasure," that he has special "needs," that there are "re-
wards," or even that there are "satisfactions." In this sense, ours is not a commercial theory. To our way of thinking, there is a continuing
movement toward the anticipation of events, rather than a series of barters for temporal satisfactions, and this movement is the essence of
human life itself. [K1955:68]

Our postulate and its corollaries do not say that a person always behaves in the manner in which outcomes are most predictable; rather,
they say that a person extends and defines a system of processes in such a manner as to provide an ultimate way in which more events may
be better predicted. He normally does not beat out a little circular path; he explores. He seeks the optimal anticipation of events. He works
toward evolving a system. He does not necessarily seek merely those events which are already optimally anticipated. [K1955:523]

According to our Choice Corollary, a person chooses for himself that alternative through which he anticipates the greater possibility for
extension and definition of his system. One may, therefore, select a part of the world about him and deal especially with it, rather than
some other part, simply because he can. In other words, one tends to choose what events he will elaborate upon because they appear to be
amenable to treatment. [K1955:735]

Related Glossary Terms

Anticipation, C-P-C Cycle

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Circumspection
A process of looking at a situation in a multidimensional manner. [K1955:516]

Circumspection is a way of considering additional constructions. “These are spades. Now what else may we say about them?” [K1955:520]

Related Glossary Terms

C-P-C Cycle, Impulsivity, Propositional Construct

Index Find Term

Commonality Corollary
To the extent that one person employs a construction of experience which is similar to that employed by another,
his psychological processes are similar to those of the other person. [K1955:90]

What we have said in our Commonality Corollary does not contradict what we have assumed in our Individuality Corollary. By using the
term, to the extent, we indicate that we are designating a totality of aspects in which the two persons' constructions of experience may be
construed as similar. That there will still be many respects in which the two persons will retain their individuality goes without saying our
Individuality Corollary took care of that. [K1955:92]

Related Glossary Terms

Individuality Corollary, Sociality Corollary

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Comprehensive Construct
A comprehensive construct is one which subsumes a wide variety of events. [K1955:532]

A permeable construct tends to move in the direction of comprehensiveness because its open-endedness enables it to embrace more and
more elements in its context as time goes on. A comprehensive construct is likely to be one which has been in use a long time, although, in
certain cases some manics, for example there is a dilation which sometimes appears to bring forth a matrix of comprehensive constructs in
a relatively short time. [K1955:477]

What do we mean by “variety”? [...] Actually, as we see it, a comprehensive construct is one which cuts across many other construct lines.
The "variety" in the elements is established by the person's having otherwise distinguished them as being different from each other by
means of other constructs. Thus, when we use the term “variety” we are referring to a “variety” within the person's own construct system.
Thus a constellatory construct would tend to be less comprehensive than a propositional construct which embraced precisely the same ele-
ments. The constellatory construct tends to fix its elements with respect to other realm memberships and hence they cannot be construed
in the same variety as they would otherwise. A wholly preemptive construct could, of course, not be comprehensive at all. [K1955:478]

In general, a healthy person's mental processes follow core structures which are comprehensive but not too permeable. Since they are com-
prehensive, a person can use them to see a wide variety of known events as consistent with his own personality. He can see himself as a
complex but organized person. [K1955:482]

Related Glossary Terms

Dilation, Incidental Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Comprehensiveness
see Comprehensive Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Constellatoriness
see Constellatory Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

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Constellatory Construct
A constellatory construct is one which fixes the realm membership of its elements. [K1955:156]

For example, stereotypes: “Anything which is a ball has got to be ...” “Since this is a ball, it must be round, resilient, and small enough to
hold in the hand”. [K1955:156-57]

It is therefore economical for a person to use constellatory constructs in many daily situations. On the other hand, if a person uses constella-
tory constructs exclusively it becomes difficult for him to recognize or to experiment with any construct which does not fit neatly into a con-
stellation. [K1955:597]

Related Glossary Terms

Preemptive Construct, Propositional Construct, Regnant Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Constriction
Constriction occurs when a person narrows his perceptual field in order to minimize apparent incompatibilities.
[K1955:532]

When a person moves in the direction of constriction he tends to limit his interests, he deals with one issue at a time, he does not accept
potential relationships between widely varying events, he beats out the path of his daily routine in smaller and smaller circles, and he in-
sists that his therapist stick to a sharply delimited version of his problem. [K1955:477]

Location of the client's areas of constriction is like observing the eye movements of a person reading a letter; the passages he can read only
a word at a time are the ones where he is likely to lose his perspective. When the clinician runs across an area of discourse in which the cli-
ent must figuratively put his finger on each successive word, he can be sure that he has located an area of constriction. We have said that
constriction occurs when a person narrows his perceptual field in order to minimize apparent incompatibility in his construings. It can be
seen in the perseveration in brain-injured adults, in the circumstantiality of certain senile persons, and in the legalistic thinking of certain
compulsive neurotics. Each of these types of clients, of course, employs constriction in a somewhat different way. [K1955:801]

The constriction enables the person to preserve the constructs; but, in doing so, it reduces them to a state of triviality. [K1955:863]

Constricting movement, like other forms of movement, may, if one wishes, be viewed as an avoidance of anxiety. That is the negative way to
understand it. If one wishes to view constriction positively, he can see it as a way of making one's world manageable by shrinking it to a size
he can hold in his own two hands.
A person finds that he knows more than he can understand. That is an anxiety-provoking state of affairs. It constitutes a “problem”. He
tries to solve his problems by keeping himself ignorant of any further knowledge until his understanding can catch up. He may even try to
ignore some of the things he already knows, a neat trick if he can get by with it, but rarely a successful way of avoiding anxiety indefinitely.
This is constriction. [K1955:901]

As with other diagnostic constructs proposed for use in connection with the psychology of personal constructs, constriction is not necessar-
ily a "bad" thing. There are times when all of us need to constrict our field in order to maintain composure. The psychology of personal con-
structs itself represents an attempt to deal with an intentionally constricted field the field of human psychology. [...] The point we wish to
make is that constriction may sometimes be used to solve problems but that, in doing so, it may let issues accumulate which will eventually
threaten a person with insurmountable anxiety. Constriction is one of the axes with respect to which we plot the position and movement of
a person's psychological system. [K1955:908]

Related Glossary Terms

Dilation, Guilt, Preemptive Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Construct
see Personal Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Construction Corollary
A person anticipates events by construing their replications. [K1955:50]

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

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Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Constructive Alternativism
All of our present interpretations of the universe are subject to revision or replacement. [K1955:15]

We take the stand that there are always some alternative constructions available to choose among in dealing with the world. No one needs
to paint himself into a corner; no one needs to be completely hemmed in by circumstances; no one needs to be the victim of his biography.
[K1955:15]

Constructive alternativism falls within that area of epistemology which is sometimes called gnosiology – the “systematic analysis of the
conceptions employed by ordinary and scientific thought in interpreting the world, and including an investigation of the art of knowledge,
or the nature of knowledge as such.” [K1955:16]

Our basic philosophical position, which we have chosen to call “constructive alternativism,” assumes that there are many ways in which the
same facts may be construed and that it is therefore impractical to claim that what events naturally are dictates the one and only way in
which they may be accurately construed. Rather, we have taken the view that the reality of events permits many alternative and useful con-
structions to be placed upon them. In deciding just which construction to employ, we need to be guided by what we want to do about the
events as well as by their reality. [K1955:774]

The psychology of personal constructs and the philosophy of constructive alternativism upon which it is based lead one to view psychother-
apy as a reconstruing process. Within these two frameworks we see man not as the victim of his past, only the victim of his construction of
it. [...] Our view, then, is that there is nothing in the world which is not subject to some form of reconstruction. This is the hope that con-
structive alternativism holds out to every man and it is the philosophical basis of the hope that a psychotherapist holds out to his client.
[K1955:937-38]

The view of constructive alternativism, and hence of our psychology of personal constructs, is that there are many different ways to cut a
pie, and the way one selects depends largely on how he expects to eat it. Similarly, there are many different ways to structure the diagnosis
of a client, and the way one chooses depends largely upon what he is able to do with the client after he has him all neatly wrapped up in a
"diagnosis." [K1955:1190]

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

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Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Context
The context of a construct comprises those elements among which the user ordinarily discriminates by means of the
construct. [K1955:562]

It is somewhat more restricted than the range of convenience, since it refers to the circumstances in which the construct emerges for practi-
cal use, and not necessarily to all the circumstances in which a person might eventually use the construct. It is somewhat more extensive
than the focus of convenience, since the construct may often appear in circumstances where its application is not optimal. [K1955:562-63]

In its minimum context a construct would be a way in which two things are alike and different from a third. [...] The minimum context for a
construct is three things. [K1955:111]

Related Glossary Terms

Focus of Convenience, Range of Convenience

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Contrast
The relationship between the two poles of a construct is one of contrast. [K1955:137]

Related Glossary Terms

Personal Construct, Range of Convenience, Similarity

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Contrast End
When referring specifically to elements at one pole of a construct, one may use the term “contrast end” to designate
the opposite pole. [K1955:563]

Related Glossary Terms

Likeness End, Personal Construct, Pole, Submerged Pole

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Control
An aspect of the relationship between a superordinate construct and the subordinate constructs which constitute its
context. The way the subordinate constructs are subsumed determines the way in which they may operate, just as
the way a person construes determines the way in which he behaves. [K1955:926-27]

Constructs are the channels in which one's mental processes run. They are two-way streets along which one may travel to reach conclu-
sions. They make it possible to anticipate the changing tides of events. For the reader who is more comfortable with teleological terms it
may be helpful to say that constructs are the controls that one places upon life the life within him as well as the life which is external to him.
Forming constructs may be considered as binding sets of events into convenient bundles which are handy for the person who has to lug
them. Events, when so bound, tend to become predictable, manageable, and controlled. [...]
Let us recall what we said about determinism and free will. We described them as essentially complementary aspects of the same hierarchi-
cal structure. That which is subsumed by a construct may be seen as determined by it; that which subsumes the construct is free with re-
spect to it. Now we may approach control as a special case of the aspect of determinism.[K1955:126]

From the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs, all behavior may be seen as controlled, just as all behavior can be seen as
natural and all nature seen as lawful. What makes one person's behavior seem more controlled than another is the way it is subsumed by
overriding construction. The “controlled” person performs long-cycle experiments; the impulsive person indulges in short-range experi-
mentation. Both must bow to the outcomes of their experiments sooner or later. Both control their behavior through superordinate con-
struction systems. [K1955:927]

Related Glossary Terms

C-P-C Cycle, Impulsivity

Index Find Term

Core Construct
A core construct is one which governs the person's maintenance processes [K1955:533] – that is, those by which he
maintains his identity and existence [K1955:482].

Core constructs do not necessarily represent dependency [...]. Moreover, role constructs, those which involve one's own behavior in the
light of the understanding of other persons' outlooks, do not necessarily represent either core constructs or dependency constructs. They
are somewhat more likely to represent the latter, but it is possible to play a role without being appreciably dependent. [K1955:483]

When a client expresses physical complaints his core constructs are likely to be involved. But more than that, his communication of his com-
plaint may also imply that dependency is also involved. From his point of view his core structure is ailing and he needs help. [K1955:868]

Psychotherapy produces new outlooks; so does graduate education. The difference is this; the new constructs developed in psychotherapy
are core constructs – that is, constructs vital to one's personal identity; the new constructs developed in the training program are ordinarily
presented and experienced as peripheral constructs – that is, constructs which are utilized more impersonally and objectively.
[K1955:1188]

Related Glossary Terms

Core Role, Dependency Construct, Maintenance Processes, Peripheral Construct, Role
Construct, Threat, Transition

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Core Role
A core role involves that part of a person's role structure by which he maintains himself as an integral being. The
more peripheral role structures are not included. [K1955:503]

Within one's core structure there are those frames which enable one to predict and control the essential interactions of himself with other
persons and with societal groups of persons. Altogether these constitute his conceptualization of his core role. Taken separately they de-
limit the facets of his core role and explain a person's varicolored reflections under changing social illumination. One's deepest understand-
ing of being maintained as a social being is his concept of his core role. [K1955:502]

Basic maintenance is not altogether a self-centered matter. We are dependent for life itself upon an understanding of the thoughts of cer-
tain other people. The psychology of personal constructs emphasizes the essential importance of social constructions. It emphasizes the
fact that a role is not always a superficial thing, a simple mask to be put on or taken off; rather, that there is a core role, a part one plays as
if his life depended upon it. Indeed, his life actually does depend upon it. Finally, it is the loss of status within the core role constructions
which is experienced as guilt. [K1955:503]

If the whole truth were known, it is likely that we would learn that the sustenance of life in the face of extreme guilt is difficult in any cul-
ture group, including our own. It is difficult, not only because it interferes with the adequate distribution of our dependencies, but also be-
cause it interferes with the spontaneous elaboration of all our psychological processes, including the so-called "bodily" processes. Our con-
structions of our roles are not altogether superficial affairs masks to be put on and taken off for the sake of social appearances only. Our
constructions of our relationships to the thinking and expectancies of certain other people reach down deeply into our vital processes.
Through our constructions of our roles we sustain even the most autonomic life functions. There are indeed core role structures.
[K1955:909]

Ordinary death is less threatening to people than is the total loss of their core role. [K1955:910]

Related Glossary Terms

Core Construct, Guilt, Hostility, Role Construct, Sociality Corollary

Index Find Term

Core Structure
see Core Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

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Counter Dependency Transference
The transference of the therapist’s dependencies upon the client.

The therapist who cannot adequately construe his client within a set of professional constructs runs the risk of transferring his own depend-
encies upon the client. [K1955:671]

The failure to rise above commonality strikes all therapists from time to time. By being reasonably alert they can detect the difficulty and
take measures to overcome it, perhaps by a restudy of the client's case or by staffing it with other therapists. The counter dependency trans-
ference is likely to be inaccessible to the therapist, since it is not easily verbalizable and since he may feel that he does have a subsuming
approach to the client. [K1955:672-73]

Related Glossary Terms

Dependency Construct, Primary Transference, Transference, Transference Cycle

Index Find Term

Creativity Cycle
The Creativity Cycle is one which starts with loosened construction and terminates with tightened and validated con-
struction. [K1955:528]

A person who always uses tight constructions may be productive that is, he may turn out a lot of things tut he cannot be creative; he cannot
produce anything which has not already been blueprinted. Creativity always arises out of preposterous thinking. [...]
But, just as a person who uses tight constructions exclusively cannot be creative, so a person who uses loose constructions exclusively can-
not be creative either. He would never get out of the stage of mumbling to himself. He would never get around to setting up a hypothesis for
crucial testing. The creative person must have that important capacity to move from loosening to tightening.
Therapy is, for the client as well as for the therapist, a creative process. It involves a series of Creativity Cycles, each of which terminates in
some well-planned, but novel, experiment. The therapist tries to help the client release his imagination and then harness it. [K1955:529]

Related Glossary Terms

Loose Construct, Tight Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Credulous Approach
From a phenomenological point of view, the client – like the proverbial customer – is always right. [K1955:322]

The clinician should maintain a kind of credulous attitude toward whatever the client says. He never discards information given by the cli-
ent merely because it does not conform to what appear to be the facts! From a phenomenological point of view, the client – like the prover-
bial customer – is always right. This is to say that his words and bis symbolic behavior possess an intrinsic truth which the clinician should
not ignore. But this is not to say that the client always describes events in the way other people would describe them or in the way it is com-
monly agreed that they did happen. It is not to say that he always describes events in the presence of one person in the way he would de-
scribe them in the presence of another. He may use one level of description in talking to the clinician, yet use another level of description in
construing events for his own purposes. He may even describe events in a way that is intended to lead the clinician to make false infer-
ences. [K1955:322]

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

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Dependency
see Dependency Construct, Dispersion of Dependency

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

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Dependency Construct
The constructs by which certain persons are construed by the child in relation to his own survival. [K1955:669]

Dependency constructs collect both persons and a particular kind of event under the same rubric. They are not role constructs, as we have
defined role; but they do, in a measure, govern interpersonal relations, They are probably put to use by the child long before he is able to do
the subsuming which is an essential feature of role construction. Normally they are greatly modified as one develops the acumen and in-
sight into the reactions of others which make role playing possible. They are not easy to verbalize. [...]
A child's dependency constructs are relatively impermeable. That is to say, he sees himself as having only one mother who can supply him
with food, only one father who can provide shelter, or, at most, only one family upon which he can depend. As he grows older he finds other
sources of food and shelter. His dependency constructs tend to become more permeable. He can allow himself to be dependent upon other
people too. And he is more and more discriminating in his allocation of dependencies. He depends upon one person for one thing and upon
another for another.
Furthermore, as the child grows older his dependency constructs tend to be less preemptive. The construct of mother becomes less of a pi-
geonhole for the person whom he construes as mother. He slowly comes to place her on other dimensions and to allow her degrees of free-
dom in his construction system. This is a step toward ceasing to see himself as wholly dependent upon a given person and, instead, seeing
the dimensional lines of his dependency extending through others. Then he can begin to depend upon various people in appropriately vari-
ous ways. [K1955:669-70]

Related Glossary Terms

Core Construct, Counter Dependency Transference, Dispersion of Dependency, Preemp-
tion, Role Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Diagnostic Construct
Diagnostic constructs are clinicians’ constructs about clients’ constructs. [K1955:459]

Since we have emphasized the subsuming of personal constructs as the primary basis for role relationships, it can be seen that these diag-
nostic constructs are designed to help the clinician assume professionally useful role relations with his clients. [K1955:452]

It should be kept in mind that the psychodiagnostic constructs which we have proposed are not traits which apply invariably to a given per-
son, but are axes or dimensions with respect to which his construction processes can be plotted from time to time. They are dimensions of
intraindividual differences as well as dimensions of interindividual differences. [K1955:514]

These constructs define the more important ways in which the client can change, and not merely ways in which the psychologist may distin-
guish him from other persons. The diagnostic dimensions are avenues of movement as seen by the therapist, just as the clienfs personal
constructs are potential avenues of movement as seen by the client. [K1955:775]

Related Glossary Terms

Transitive Diagnosis

Index Find Term

Dichotomy Corollary
A person’s construction system is composed of a finite number of dichotomous constructs. [K1955:59]

Related Glossary Terms

Personal Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Dilation
Dilation occurs when a person broadens his perceptual field in order to reorganize it on a more comprehensive
level. It does not, in itself, include the comprehensive reconstruction of those elements. [K1955:532]

When a person moves in the direction of dilation he jumps around more from topic to topic, he lumps his childhood with his future, he sees
vast ranges of events as possibly related, he participates in a wider variety of activities, and, if he is a client undergoing psychotherapy, he
tends to see everything that happens to him as potentially related to his problem. [K1955:477]

While dilation may not actually involve the construing of many elements or a wide variety of elements within the same construct contexts,
it is, as we have pointed out, a way to set one's stage for more comprehensive conceptualization. [K1955:477]

Dilation is a good thing if one has the construction system to handle it. If the over-all construction system is shaky, there is likely to be a big
crash. [K1955:845]

Sometimes the clinician may infer anxiety from the client's dilation. If the client, when confronted with invalidating evidence, suddenly
dilates, it may be his way of looking for additional elements which, if added to the profusion of elements before him, may somehow provide
a key to the situation and enable him to regain structure. To the observer this may seem like distractibility. Yet, from the client's point of
view, it is actually a frantic search for structure by finding new elements that is, by dilation. [K1955:899]

Related Glossary Terms

Comprehensive Construct, Constriction

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Disorder
From the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs we may define a disorder as any personal construction
which is used repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation. [K1955:831]

From the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs, psychological disorders can be traced to characteristics of a person's con-
struction system. There may be other bases of explanation but this is the one that seems most profitable. If such an explanation will ade-
quately cover the facts, we shall at last have arrived at a vantage point from which the treatment of psychological disorders may be seen as
plausible. One can do something about a person's construction system. On the other hand, if we are bound to explain disorders in terms of
the past, treatment can be accomplished only by turning the clock back or by tediously canceling out each old experience by overlaying it
with a new one. [K1955:832]

[A disorder] represents any structure which appears to fail to accomplish its purpose. [K1955:835]

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

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Dispersion of Dependency
Dependency is said undispersed when very few people meet all the child’s (or person’s) needs; it is said dispersed
when the person allocates his or her dependencies over a wider range of people, meeting certain needs from some
people, and other needs from others.

The child depends for sustenance upon certain people. It may not be particularly meaningful to say that he is more dependent than is an
adult. An adult is dependent too, but he extends his dependency discriminatingly to more people, to more things, and to institutions. The
child, whose dependency is closely tied up with certain people, is likely to have more constructs which deal with his dependency relations to
those particular people. [K1955:461]

Related Glossary Terms

Dependency Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 3 - The Exploration of Personal Construct Systems

Element
The things or events which are abstracted by a person’s use of a construct are called elements. In some systems
these are called objects. [K1955:562]

Related Glossary Terms

Personal Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Emergence
see Emergent Pole

Related Glossary Terms

Emergent Pole, Implicit Pole

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Emergent Pole
The emergent pole of a construct is that which embraces most of the immediately perceived context. [K1955:138]

Related Glossary Terms

Emergence, Implicit Pole, Personal Construct, Submerged Pole

Index Find Term

Experience Corollary
A person’s construction system varies as he successively construes the replications of events. [K1955:72]

By calling this corollary the Experience Corollary we indicate what we assume to be the essential nature of experience. Experience is made
up of the successive construing of events. It is not constituted merely by the succession of events themselves.[K1955:73]

The Experience Corollary has profound implications for our thinking about the topic of learning. When we accept the assumption that a
person's construction system varies as he successively construes the replications of events, together with the antecedent assumption that
the course of all psychological processes is plotted by one's construction of events, we have pretty well bracketed the topic of learning. What
has been commonly called 'learning" has been covered at the very outset. Learning is assumed to take place. It has been built into the as-
sumptive structure of the system. The question of whether or not it takes place, or what is learned and what is not learned, is no longer a
topic for debate within the system we have proposed. [K1955:75]

Related Glossary Terms

Experience Cycle, Validation/Invalidation

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Experience Cycle
The unity of experience is a cycle embracing five phases: anticipation, investment, encounter, confirmation or dis-
confirmation, and constructive revision.

Related Glossary Terms

Anticipation, Experience Corollary, Validation/Invalidation

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Fear
Fear is the awareness of an imminent incidental change in one's core structures. [K1955:533]

Related Glossary Terms

Maintenance Processes, Transition

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Focus of Convenience
A constructs focus of convenience comprises those particular things to which the user finds its application maxi-
mally useful. These are the elements upon which the construct is likely to have been formed originally. [K1955:562]

Related Glossary Terms

Context, Range of Convenience

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Fragmentation Corollary
A person may successively employ a variety of construction subsystems which are inferentially incompatible with
each other. [K1955:83]

Related Glossary Terms

Modulation Corollary, Permeable Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Fundamental Postulate
A person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events. [K1955:46]

Related Glossary Terms

Anticipation

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Guilt
Guilt is the awareness of dislodgment of the self from one's core role structure. [K1955:533]

Guilt refers to a condition of the person's construction system and not to society's judgment of one's moral culpability. [K1955:489]

Finally, it is the loss of status within the core role constructions which is experienced as guilt. [K1955:503]

There are many ways in which guilt can enter the picture of a person's life. From the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs
the point which all of them have in common is this loss of core role structure. We have not found it necessary to invoke the notions of pleas-
ure and pain nor their derivatives, reward and punishment, in defining guilt. We do not see such terms as representing satisfactory explana-
tory principles. It seems much easier to conceive the variety of ways in which guilt is manifested as all representing loss of core role struc-
ture than to try to explain them as reenactments of the punishment scene of a mother teaching her baby bowel control. [K1955:504-05]

Guilt is psychological exile from one's core role, regardless of where, when, with whom, or in what scenes the part has been played.
[K1955:505]

Guilt is not of itself a psychological disorder. It is a form of social disidentification which may represent either exile or emancipation.
[K1955:836]

If a person could ignore his loss of role by constriction, he might also be able, thereby, to avoid his guilt and its implied paralysis of all the
elaborative processes that make life worth living. Some persons do this. [K1955:867]

Since guilt, as we have defined it, represents dislodgment from one's core role structure, we could scarcely expect guilt not to be related to
“physical” health. Strictly within the psychological realm one might transpose the Biblical saying, “The wages of sin is death,” into “The
wages of guilt is death.” It is genuinely difficult to sustain life in the face of guilt. Some people do not even try. [K1955:909]

If a person feels guilty for what he has done, and yet considers no alternatives, we can expect him to become hostile. He demands reinstate-
ment of his core role. [K1955:910]

Related Glossary Terms

Aggressiveness, Constriction, Core Role, Hostility, Transition

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Hostility
Hostility is the continued effort to extort validational evidence in favor of a type of social prediction which has al-
ready proved itself a failure. [K1955:510]

It is customary to think of hostility as the disposition to do someone harm to hurt him. But in the psychology of personal constructs we seek
a way of understanding hostility from the point of view of the person who feels it and what it is that he is actually seeking to accomplish.
[K1955:510]

Hostility arises when one cannot live with the results of his social experimentation. Hostility involves experiments undertaken with respect
to people. Frequently role constructs are put to test, although that is not an essential feature. Moreover, in hostility, the person, instead of
revising or anxiously abandoning the construction which has proved to be misleading, takes further active steps to alter the data to fit his
hypotheses. If people do not behave the way he predicts, he will make them! That will validate his construction of them! [K1955:512]

Psychoanalysis defines guilt in terms of the moral turpitude of accomplishing or seeking to accomplish injury to someone. Personal-
construct psychology leaves the matter of moral turpitude per se to systems other than psychological. Psychoanalysis perceives hostility as
a potentially destructive attitude. Personal-construct theory recognizes hostility as a persistent irrealism. [K1955:514]

We have defined hostility as being in the social realm. Yet there is a counterpart of hostility which can be directed against things as well as
persons. It is interesting and sometimes amusing to see the counterpart of hostility directed against things. A hostile young child may crush
a toy in attempting to force it to do what he has anticipated for it. [K1955:880]

The tragedy of hostility in the world is not so much that people are hostile, or even that their hostility leads them to destroy those who ig-
nore the incentives they offer, but that there is so much willingness to indulge the hostile person's whims. Such indulgence leads the hostile
person down a garden path bordered with flowers of appeasement. At the end of the path there is a wilderness of confused human relations
for all. [K1955:881]

Our definition of hostility does not coincide with the popular notion of what hostility is. This case in particular is not one which would be
popularly labeled as hostile. On the other hand, a skilled and psychoanalytically oriented clinician would be likely to have his attention im-
mediately drawn to the hostile features of the case. He would probably arrive at his diagnosis via the psychoanalytic concept of “reaction
formation”. A behavioristically oriented clinician might not use the notion of hostility at all, or he might withhold a diagnosis of hostility
until it could be shown that the client was acting destructively toward someone. [K1955:886]

If a person feels guilty for what he has done, and yet considers no alternatives, we can expect him to become hostile. He demands reinstate-
ment of his core role. Instead of perceiving the unreasonableness of his own demands he feels that others are making unreasonable de-
mands upon him. He sees other people as behaving or thinking in a hostile manner. [K1955:910]

Related Glossary Terms

Aggressiveness, Core Role, Guilt, Transition, Validation/Invalidation

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Impermeability
See Permeable Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Implicit Pole
The implicit pole of a construct is the one which contrasts with the emergent pole. It is frequently not mentioned by
name. Sometimes the person has no symbolization for it; it is symbolized only implicitly by the emergent term.
[K1955:138]

Related Glossary Terms

Emergence, Emergent Pole, Implicitness, Symbol

Index Find Term

Implicitness
see Implicit Pole

Related Glossary Terms

Implicit Pole

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Impulsivity
Impulsivity is a characteristic foreshortening of the C-P-C Cycle. [K1955:533]

Impulsivity is a form of control, not the absence of control. The field is preempted. A choice point is established. A decision is made. Action
ensues. The characteristic feature of impulsivity is that the period of circumspection which normally precedes decision is unduly short-
ened. The preemption, upon the basis of which the decision is reached, is also likely to be of short duration. It is often followed by another
period of circumspection. [K1955:526]

Impulsivity is not a trait reserved for certain people only. It is a dimension of behavior. All people behave with a measure of impulsivity. A
person is more impulsive over one span of time than over another. A person is likely to be more impulsive about some matters than about
others. [K1955:527]

A person caught in an anxiety situation may construe impulsively in order to bring some semblance of structure to bear upon his problems.
The impulsivity is a quick attempt at solution. A person caught in a guilt situation may act impulsively to restore his role. He may return
unexpectedly to his old group identifications. The social-drinking alcoholic is likely to exhibit this impulsive restoration of his group identi-
fications. [K1955:527]

Related Glossary Terms

C-P-C Cycle, Circumspection, Control

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Incidental Construct
An incidental construct is one which subsumes a narrow variety of events. [K1955:532]

Related Glossary Terms

Comprehensive Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Individuality Corollary
Persons differ from each other in their construction of events. [K1955:55]

Related Glossary Terms

Commonality Corollary

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Level of Cognitive Awareness
The level of cognitive awareness ranges from high to low. A high-level construct is one which is readily expressed in
socially effective symbols; whose alternatives are both readily accessible; which falls well within the range of conven-
ience of the client's major constructions; and which is not suspended by its superordinating constructs. [K1955:532]

The therapist may even deal with the client's experience at a higher level of cognitive awareness than the client does. But does this mean
that the therapist is closer to the truth, or to reality, or to understanding than the client is? Perhaps not. The client is himself a bit of truth,
a bit of reality, and a part of the very substance of understanding. Is the therapist closer to the client than the client is to himself? We think
not.
But the therapist's psychological training, if he has any, should enable him to make certain predictions about the client which the client
cannot make about himself. He does this, not because he is a better master of the client's construction system than the client is himself, but
because he is able to subsume the client's construction system and construe it along with other features of reality which the client does not
understand so well. [K1955:1020]

Related Glossary Terms

Preverbal Construct, Range of Convenience, Submergence, Subordinate Construct, Super-
ordinate Construct, Suspension

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Likeness End
When referring specifically to elements at one pole of a construct, one may use the term likeness end, meaning that
we are referring to the pole at which these elements are grouped by the construction. [K1955:137]

Related Glossary Terms

Contrast End, Pole, Submerged Pole

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Loose Construct
Loose constructs are those which lead to varying predictions but which, for practical purposes, may be said to retain
their identity. [K1955:484]

Among other things, loose construction is exemplified by dreams. The loose construction is like a rough sketch which may be preliminary
to a carefully drafted design. The sketch permits flexible interpretation. This or that feature is not precisely placed. The design is somewhat
ambiguous. [K1955:484]

People protect themselves against anxiety in various ways. One way is in a loosening of one's constructs. [K1955:497]

The psychoanalytic therapeutic procedure lays great stress on loosening. In emphasizing loosening the analysts believe that they are plumb-
ing the depths of the client's personality. [...] The psychology of personal constructs sees the new constructs which arise out of loosened
construction, not as the "true thoughts" or "insights" of the person, but as new hypotheses which must still be tightened up and tested be-
fore they are to be accepted as useful. [K1955:530]

By loosening his constructions the person makes a kind of rubber-sheet templet to his experiences. His constructions can now be stretched
to fit almost any kind of validational evidence. No matter if he does appear to miss his predictions; he can always take the stand, “That is
practically what I said.” Thus he escapes, for the time being at least, the chaos of anxiety. [K1955:854]

Of course, one loose construction is only approximately the same as another for it is only approximately the same as itself from time to
time. The communication between two persons who both employ the similar loose construction will not be as precise as will the communi-
cation between two persons who employ similar tight construction. Yet each loose thinker Is tolerant of the other's ambiguity because it is
approximate to his own. Neither needs to be made anxious by the other. Neither needs to avoid the other in order to maintain his poise. In
such a case, then, loose conceptualization does not lead inevitably to withdrawal. ]K1955:857-58]

Related Glossary Terms

Creativity Cycle, Loosening, Tight Construct, Tightening

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Loosening
The process leading from a tight to a looser construct.

Related Glossary Terms

Loose Construct, Tight Construct, Tightening

Index Find Term

Maintenance Processes
The processes which are related to the person’s identity and existence and which are outside the range of conven-
ience of personal construct theory as a psychological theory.

Related Glossary Terms

Core Construct, Fear, Threat

Index Find Term

Modulation Corollary
The variation in a person’s construction system is limited by the permeability of the construct within whose range of
convenience the variants lie. [K1955:77]

Our Modulation Corollary states that the variation in a person's construction system is limited by the permeability of the constructs within
whose ranges of convenience the variants lie. This is a matter of taking events in one's stride, If he tries to deal with his world by legalistic
bookkeeping, he is likely to find that there is little he can do to adapt himself to varying events. A person who approaches his world with a
repertory of impermeable constructs is likely to find his system unworkable through the wider expanses of events. He will, therefore, tend
to constrict his experience to the narrower ranges which he is prepared to understand. [K1955:172]

Related Glossary Terms

Fragmentation Corollary, Permeable Construct, Range of Convenience

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Organization Corollary
Each person characteristically evolves, for his convenience in anticipating events, a construction system embracing
ordinal relationships between constructs. [K1955:56]

Related Glossary Terms

Subordinate Construct, Superordinate Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Peripheral Construct
A peripheral construct is one which can be altered without serious modification of the core structure. [K1955:533]

Related Glossary Terms

Core Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Permeability
see Permeable Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Permeable Construct
A construct is permeable if it will admit to its range of convenience new elements which are not yet construed within
its framework. [K1955:79]

An utterly concrete construct, if there were such a tiling, would not be permeable at all, for it would be made up of certain specified ele-
ments – those and no others. Such a construct would have to be impermeable.
There are, of course, relative degrees of permeability and impermeability. [K1955:79]

In earlier formulations of the theory of personal constructs we used the term “stable aspects” instead of “permeability”. Permeable

constructs, because they possess resiliency under the impact of new experience, do tend to be stable, but “permeability” is a more precise
and operationally useful mark of identification for the kinds of constructs we have in mind than is “stability.” [K1955:80]

Permeability is an indication of the availability of a construct for meeting varied situations in life. It is not a measure of a construct's effec-
tiveness except in this one respect. [K1955:234]

During the course of psychotherapy the clinician is always interested in the development of impermeability in certain constructs which
have caused difficulty for the client. It is as if the client were closing out his file. When he says “I was” instead of “I am” some clinicians con-
sider the change a possible healthy development of impermeability, with respect to the construct involved. Impermeable constructs are
partly unavailable to the client and, as far as adjusting his role to new people is concerned, inactive. [K1955:234]

This failure of the construct system to embrace urgent events may accompany one's use of incompatible subsystems of construction. Most
of us can tolerate some amount of incompatibility. Our Fragmentation Corollary assumes that one may successively employ a variety of
construction subsystems which are inferentially incompatible with each other. The Modulation Corollary, as we keep reminding the reader,
assumes that the variation in a person's construction system is limited by the permeability of the constructs within whose ranges of conven-
ience the variants lie. Taken together, these two corollaries assume that one can tolerate some incompatibility, but not too much. The
amount that can be tolerated depends upon the permeability of the superordinating constructs. If those constructs which would normally
superordinate the variants are insufficiently permeable to admit the impending variants into their ranges of convenience, the person finds
himself in an anxiety situation. His construction system fails him. [K1955:496]

Related Glossary Terms

Fragmentation Corollary, Modulation Corollary

Index Find Term

Personal Construct
An aspect by which at least two elements are construed as similar and, for the same aspect, different from at least a
third one.

[Constructs] are ways of construing the world. They are what enables man, and lower animals too, to chart a course of behavior, explicitly
formulated or implicitly acted out, verbally expressed or utterly inarticulate, consistent with other courses of behavior or inconsistent with
them, intellectually reasoned or vegetatively sensed. [K1955:9]

A way in which some things are construed as being alike and yet different from others. [K1955:74]

Related Glossary Terms

Contrast, Contrast End, Dichotomy Corollary, Element, Emergent Pole, Pole, Submerged
Pole

Index Find Term

Pole
Each construct discriminates between two poles, one at each end of its dichotomy. The elements abstracted are like
each other at each pole with respect to the construct and are unlike the elements at the other pole. [K1955:563]

Related Glossary Terms

Contrast End, Likeness End, Personal Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Preemption
see Preemptive Construct

Related Glossary Terms

C-P-C Cycle, Dependency Construct

Index Find Term

Preemptive Construct
A preemptive construct is one which preempts its elements for membership in its own realm exclusively.
[K1955:156]

The species type of construct belongs to this category. It can be exemplified by the statement, “Anything which is a ball can be nothing but a
ball.” In this case the construct is ball, and all the things which are balls are excluded from the realms of other constructs; they cannot be
“spheres,” “pellets,” “shots,” or anything but balls. This is a pigeonhole type of construct; what has been put into this pigeonhole cannot
simultaneously be put into any other. [K1955:153-54]

Preemptive thinking, in a moment of decision, is essential if one is to take an active part in his universe. But preemptive thinking which
never resolves itself into prepositional thinking condemns the person to a state of intellectual rigor mortis. [K1955:156]

Preemptive or partly preemptive constructs have a stultifying effect upon diagnosis. Take, for example, the notion, growing partly out of
Kraepelinian thinking, that a person who is a psychotic cannot also be neurotic. This is a somewhat preemptive construction. It is the same
kind of reasoning which leads some people to say that what is “physiological” cannot be “psychological,” or that a given case “belongs to”
the physician rather than to the psychologist or to the teacher. This kind of pigeonhole reasoning prevents the formulation of new classes of
hypotheses and the scientific testing of those hypotheses. It precludes prepositional treatment of phenomena. [K1955:456]

Related Glossary Terms

Constellatory Construct, Constriction, Primary Transference, Propositional Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Preverbal Construct
A preverbal construct is one which continues to be used, even though it has no consistent word symbols. It may or
may not have been devised before the person had command of speech. [K1955:532]

In dealing with a preverbal construct it is important to realize that, ordinarily, it is one which was originally designed to construe those ele-
ments of which an infant could be aware. One should therefore not expect his adult client to describe or portray a preverbal construct in a
manner which is becoming to a mature person. The therapist has before him an infant who is speaking with the voice of an adult. The in-
fant's thinking may be overlaid with the sophistication of adulthood; but as the overlay is thrown back, the wide-eyed, vaguely comprehend-
ing, dereistic child is revealed. [K1955:461]

[...] preverbal constructs, when revealed in an adult client, are often found to relate to the client's dependency, though that need not always
be so. [K1955:461]

Preverbal constructs may, in some instances, represent a kind of core of the client's construction system. They are likely to deal with the
self as well as with other people and inanimate things. The therapist should therefore not be surprised to find a client using a preverbal
type of construction to maintain his integrity and unique identity in the face of difficulties. Preverbal constructs are often found in the cli-
ent's reserve lines of self-defense. [K1955:461-62]

The preverbal construct may have an overlay of verbalized constructs which may mislead the clinician. The client may appear to be highly
articulate. There may be a torrent of words. The vocabulary may be versatile, picturesque, and, in many respects, unusually apt. [...] This is
likely to be a case in which certain important preverbal constructions are operating in a permeable fashion. [...] Usually the preverbalized
constructions which are covered with the overlay of verbalized constructs relate to the client's dependencies. [K1955:462]

[...] some persons utilize their preverbal constructs in such a permeable way that many of the elements of adult life are added to the con-
texts of these infantile constructs. [K1955:463]

There are four kinds of clinical evidence which one may use in determining whether or not he is dealing with essentially preverbal construc-
tions: (1) the client's efforts at verbalization repeatedly end up in an expression of confusion; (2) inability to verbalize the construct consis-
tently but relatively better ability to illustrate the construct by producing the elements which make up its context; (3) appearance in
dreams, the content of which the client claims he cannot remember but which, on questioning, appear to have some structure in terms of
mood, number of people, movement, and so on; (4) "recollections" of events which the client is not sure really happened. [K1955:465]

In part, the notion of preverbal constructs is a substitute construct for dealing with some of the elements which are otherwise structured by
means of the construct of the “unconscious.” The construct of preverbal constructs has a better range of convenience, including, as it does,
personal constructs which are communicable by means other than words, and including personal constructs which are only partly immobi-
lized because of their poor symbolization. [K1955:466]

Related Glossary Terms

Level of Cognitive Awareness, Symbol

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Preverbalism
see Preverbal Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Primary Transference
The client construes the therapist preemptively. [K1955:674]

The therapist becomes “typed” in his part. No longer can he cast himself in a variety of supporting roles. The play must always be written
and enacted to fit his identity. Therapeutic movement may appear to take place within the therapy room, but no really new approaches ap-
pear to be tried outside of the therapy room. What the client learns he generalizes to other behaviors of the therapist but not to other peo-
ple. [K1955:675]

Frequently it is possible to detect the forming of primary transference by the client's seeking to invoke the therapist's counter dependency
transferences. [K1955:677]

Related Glossary Terms

Counter Dependency Transference, Preemptive Construct, Secondary Transference, Trans-
ference

Index Find Term

Professional Construct
see Diagnostic Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Propositional Construct
A propositional construct is one which leaves its elements open to construction in all other respects. [K1955:155]

In the case of the ball example the following illustrates a prepositional construct: “Any roundish mass may be considered, among other
things, as a ball.” [...] The propositional construct [...] represents one end of a continuum, the other end of which is represented by the pre-
emptive and constellatory constructs.[K1955:155]

A construct which carries no implications regarding the other realm memberships of its elements is a propositional construct. This is uncon-
taminated construction. [K1955:564]

Related Glossary Terms

C-P-C Cycle, Circumspection, Constellatory Construct, Preemptive Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Propositionality
see Propositional Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Range Corollary
A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range of events only. [K1955:68]

Related Glossary Terms

Anticipation

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Range of Convenience
A construct’s range of convenience comprises all those things to which the user finds its application useful.

The theory's range of convenience is what determines the boundaries of the discipline. A range of convenience is that expanse of the real
world over which a given system or theory provides useful coverage. Those features of the universe which do not fit neatly into the system
are left out of the psychological realm for the time being. [K1955:17]

The construct denotes an aspect of the elements lying within its range of convenience, on the basis of which some of the elements are simi-
lar to others and some are in contrast. [K1955:61]

We see relevant similarity and contrast as essential and complementary features of the same construct and both of them as existing within
the range of convenience of the construct. That which is outside the range of convenience of the construct is not considered part of the con-
trasting field but simply an area of irrelevancy. [K1955:69]

Related Glossary Terms

Context, Contrast, Focus of Convenience, Level of Cognitive Awareness, Modulation Corol-
lary, Similarity

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Regnancy
See Regnant Construct

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Regnant Construct
A regnant construct is a kind of superordinate construct which assigns each of its elements to a category on an all-
or-none basis. [K1955:480]

This is the kind of grouping one finds in classical logic. For example, the construct of implement would be regnant over the construct of
spade if one were to say that all spades were implements. The construction of spade is so regulated by the construction of implement that if
one says, “This is a spade,” he has also implied that this is an implement. Calling something a “spade” commits it to another classification
too. [K1955:480-81]

A regnant construct has the effect of making its subordinate constructs constellatory. If all spades are implements, then the realm member-
ship with respect to implement is fixed. The moment one applies the construct of spade to an object, he has implied that it is an implement.
[K1955:481]

A superordinate construct is not a regnant construct if it commits a subordinate element construct only to its range of convenience and
does not invariably class the subordinate construct as one of the like elements or as one of the unlike elements. [K1955:481]

Related Glossary Terms

Constellatory Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Role Construct
A role construct is a construct which has as elements the construction processes of other people.

Role constructs are [...] constructs which have other persons as elements in their contexts. More particularly, they are constructs which
have the presumed constructs of other persons as elements in their contexts. [K1955:209]

Core constructs do not necessarily represent dependency, as we have defined dependency in a previous chapter. Moreover, role constructs,
those which involve one's own behavior in the light of the understanding of other persons' outlooks, do not necessarily represent either
core constructs or dependency constructs. They are somewhat more likely to represent the latter, but it is possible to play a role without
being appreciably dependent. [K1955:483]

Related Glossary Terms

Core Construct, Core Role, Dependency Construct, Sociality Corollary, Transference, Trans-
ference Cycle

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Secondary Transference
The client applies to the therapist a varying sequence of constructs from the figures of his past.

The therapist is himself merely incidental to the client's perceptions, and the constructions placed upon him by the client are lifted directly
from former experiences. The therapist, or a part of his behavior, is collected as another element in the context of each construct.
[K1955:674]

Related Glossary Terms

Primary Transference, Transference

Index Find Term

Similarity
The relationship between the elements under the same pole.

In construing, the person notes features in a series of elements which characterize some of the elements and are particularly uncharacteris-
tic of others. Thus he erects constructs of similarity and contrast. Both the similarity and the contrast are inherent in the same construct, A
construct which implied similarity without contrast would represent just as much of a chaotic undifferentiated homogeneity as a construct
which implied contrast without similarity would represent a chaotic particularized heterogeneity. The former would leave the person en-
gulfed in a sea with no landmarks to relieve the monotony; the latter would confront him with an interminable series of kaleidoscopic
changes in which nothing would ever appear familiar. [K1955:50-51]

We see the construct as composed essentially of a similarity-contrast dimension which he strikes through a part of his field of experience.
We need to look at both ends of it if we want to know what it means to him. We cannot understand him well if we look only at the similarity
“respect” end of the dimension. We cannot understand what he means by “respect” unless we know what he sees as relevantly opposed to
“respect.” [K1955:71]

Related Glossary Terms

Contrast, Range of Convenience

Index Find Term

Sociality Corollary
To the extent that one person construes the construction processes of another, he may play a role in a social process
involving the other person. [K1955:95]

In order to play a role in an ongoing social process – and therapy is such a process – one must, in the language of our Sociality Corollary,
have a subsuming construction of those with whom he is conjoined in that process. Commonality is not enough. Commonality, as defined
by the Commonality Corollary, is no more than a basis for people's duplicating each other's psychological processes. [K1955:672]

Related Glossary Terms

Commonality Corollary, Core Role, Role Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Submerged Pole
The submerged pole of a construct is the one which is less available for application to events. [K1955:532]

A construct is a two-ended thing. There is the likeness and there is the contrast end. Sometimes one of these two ends is less available than
the other. When this is markedly true we may refer to the less available end as the submerged end. [K1955:467]

Ordinarily it is the contrast end of the construct which is submerged. In some cases it is the likeness end. Since constructs are usually sym-
bolized by some element which is associated with the likeness end, it becomes somewhat more difficult to uncover the submerged likeness
end of a construct. [K1955:469]

Related Glossary Terms

Contrast End, Emergent Pole, Likeness End, Personal Construct

Index Find Term

Submergence
see Submerged Pole

Related Glossary Terms

Level of Cognitive Awareness

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Subordinate Construct
A subordinate construct is one which is included as an element in the context of another. [K1955:532]

A subordinate construct is an element in the context of a superordinate construct. It is one of the things with which the superordinate
construct is concerned. The fact that it is subordinate tells us this and this only. We do not know,, until we take a look at the superordinate
construct itself, how the subordinate construct will be grouped, whether all on the "like" side, all on the "unlike" side, or divided. A con-
struct’s subordination carries no constellatory or nonpropositionality implications. It is committed only to the range of convenience of the
superordinate construct. [K1955:480]

Related Glossary Terms

Level of Cognitive Awareness, Organization Corollary, Superordinate Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Superordinate Construct
A superordinate construct is one which includes another as one of the elements in its context. [K1955:532]

A person's construction system is composed of complementary superordinate and subordinate relationships. The subordinate systems are
determined by the superordinate systems into whose jurisdiction they are placed. The superordinate systems, in turn, are free to invoke
new arrangements among the systems which are subordinate to them. [...] In his role identifying him with his superordinating system, the
person is free with respect to subordinate changes he attempts to make. In his role as the follower of his own fundamental principles, he
finds his life determined by them.[K1955:78]

Constructs are not to be confounded with the factual material of which they are personalized versions; they are interpretations of those
facts. But constructs may be used as viewpoints for seeing other constructs, as in the hierarchical relationships of constructs within a sys-
tem. In that sense the superordinate constructs are versions of those constructs which are subordinate to them. This makes the subordinate
constructs a form of reality which is construed through the use of the superordinate constructs. [K1955:136]

Related Glossary Terms

Level of Cognitive Awareness, Organization Corollary, Subordinate Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Suspension
A suspended element is one which is omitted from the context of a construct as the result of revision of the person's
construct system. [K1955:532]

The phenomena which are popularly identified as "forgetting," "dissociation," and "repression" can all be handled within the theoretical
framework of the psychology of personal constructs in much the same way. In order for an experience to be remembered or perceived
clearly it must be supported within a system of constructs. When one construct is resolved in favor of another one, some of the elements
tend to drop out, especially those which do not fit so well into the new construct. Simultaneously, other elements which were once less avail-
able to the person are now more prominently displayed because the new structure provides a convenient peg to hang them on. When one
structure is substituted for another, the range of convenience of the new one is not likely to coincide precisely with that of the other. The
new range of convenience can almost always be expected to allow some elements to drop out and others to reappear. [K1955:471]

When a structure is rejected, because at the moment it is incompatible with the over-all system which the person is using, we may say that
it has undergone suspension. [K1955:472]

Suspended structures are not necessarily impermeable during the period of their suspension. New experiences may be incorporated within
the suspended structure even though the structure may still remain largely unavailable to elaboration and modification. A suspended struc-
ture is not easily tested and hence not easily invalidated or reconstrued within a larger structure. [K1955:474-75]

Related Glossary Terms

Level of Cognitive Awareness

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Symbol
The word introduced into the context of a construct and which gives the construct its name.

A person is not necessarily articulate about the constructions he places upon his world. Some of his constructions are not symbolized by
words; he can express them only in pantomime. Even the elements which are construed may have no verbal handles by which they can be
manipulated and the person finds himself responding to them with speechless impulse. Thus, in studying the psychology of man-the-
philosopher, we must take into account his subverbal patterns of representation and construction. [K1955:16]

Construing is not to be confounded with verbal formulation. A person's behavior may be based upon many interlocking equivalence-
difference patterns which are never communicated in symbolic speech. Many of these preverbal or nonverbal governing constructs are em-
braced in the realm of physiology. [K1955:51]

By construction of experience we do not necessarily refer to highly verbalized interpretations. We keep reiterating this point. A person may
construe his experience with little recourse to words, as, for example, in certain conditioned reflexes. Even those constructions which are
symbolized by words are not necessarily similar just because the words are similar. Conversely, two persons may be using essentially the
same constructions of their experience, although they express themselves in quite different terms. [K1955:92]

It is not possible for one to express the whole of his construction system. Many of one's constructs have no symbols to be used as conven-
ient word handles. They are therefore difficult, not only for others to grasp and subsume within their own systems, but also difficult for the
person himself to manipulate or to subsume within the verbally labeled parts of his system. The fact that they do not readily lend them-
selves to organization within the verbally labeled parts of the system makes it difficult for a person to be very articulate about how he feels,
or for him to predict what he will do in a future situation which, as yet, exists only in terms of verbal descriptions. [K1955:110]

Symbolism is a handy tool. [...] it is not the sole tool for shaping thought but is certainly a very useful and commonly used one.
Man has developed a neat trick in the use of symbolism. He makes up sounds and shapes and introduces them artificially into the context
of his constructs as one of the elements. Then he lets this sound or shape become a symbol of the construct. [K1955:138]

Related Glossary Terms

Implicit Pole, Preverbal Construct

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Basic Theory

Symbolism
See Symbol

Related Glossary Terms

Drag related terms here

Index Find Term

Threat
Threat is the awareness of imminent comprehensive change in one's core structures. [K1955:489]

Basically, threat is a characteristic of a constructs relation to the superordinate constructs in a system. A construct is threatening when it is
itself an element in a next-higher-order construct which is, in turn, incompatible with other higher-order constructs upon which the person
is dependent for his living. The construct of danger is a threat when it becomes an element in the context of death or injury. There are cir-
cumstances when it is not a threat, at least not a very significant one. A rollercoaster elicits a construct of danger, but that danger is rarely
placed in the context of death. [K1955:166]

In order for the threat to be significant, the prospective change must be substantial. Death is an example. Death is threatening to most peo-
ple. We describe it as threatening to them because they perceive it both as likely to happen to them and as likely to bring about drastic
changes in their core constructs. Death is not so threatening when it does not seem so imminent. It is not so threatening to those who see
either their souls or the fundamental meaning of their lives as being unaffected by it. In such persons the core structures are not so likely to
be affected by the prospect of death.
The prospective change must appear to be comprehensive. This means that the threat represents a multifaceted alternative core structure.
One is threatened when that which he thought all along might happen to his core structure at last looks as if it was about to arrive. A pris-
oner of twenty years, while eager, is nevertheless threatened on the last day by the imminence of his release. Most persons are threatened
by the likelihood of their showing infantile behavior in certain situations. A new client about to undergo therapy is threatened by the pros-
pect that he may really change his outlook. [K1955:489-90]

Related Glossary Terms

Core Construct, Maintenance Processes, Transition

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Tight Construct
A tight construct is one which leads to unvarying predictions. [K1955:533]

Consider the person who faces the changing scene of life with nothing but tight constructions. Every prediction, every anticipation, must be
precise and exact Every element which he construes must fit the context of its construct without any possibility of being questioned. There
are no loose fits which might let anxiety seep in. The whole structure is designed to be anxiety-tight. [K1955:849]

The person who casts his prediction in the form of a tight construct has the chance of getting a clear-cut yes or no answer. The loose-
thinking person blinks his eyes and mumbles, “What happened?” [K1955:1064]

Related Glossary Terms

Creativity Cycle, Loose Construct, Loosening, Tightening

Index Find Term

Chapter 2 - Diagnostic Constructs

Tightening
The process leading from a loose to a tighter construct.

Related Glossary Terms

Loose Construct, Loosening, Tight Construct

Index Find Term

Transference
The tendency of any person to perceive another prejudicately as a replicate of a third person. In this sense, “transfer-
ence” is not necessarily pathological, nor is the prejudgment necessarily antipathetic. The client in therapy may
transfer various perceptions upon his therapist. [K1955:1100]

All interpersonal relations are based essentially on transference relations, though they are subject to validation and revision. [K1955:145]

Transference [is] a special case of experimentation with role constructs. [K1955:163]

Transference, as the term is reserved for use in psychotherapy, is based upon role constructs rather than constructs in general. It has to do
with one's perceptions of persons who perform parts in cooperative social enterprises. It refers to the way one attempts to subsume the con-
structs of others. In psychotherapy it represents the client's bid to subsume parts of the construct system of the therapist and thence to play
in a role relationship with him. Unless the client makes an effort to construe the therapist by transferring role constructs upon him, the
therapist is scarcely able to exemplify any aspect of reality in the hope of having it meaningfully interpreted. [K1955:664]

Related Glossary Terms

Counter Dependency Transference, Primary Transference, Role Construct, Secondary Trans-
ference, Transference Cycle

Index Find Term

Transference Cycle
The client's use of constructions which are transferred upon the therapist appears to go in cycles. [K1955:681]

During a given cycle of transference it appears that the client elaborates, examines, and tests certain role constructs. He makes use of the
therapist – may even be quite dependent upon him for a time. Yet upon the completion of each major reconstruction of a construct area the
transferences made upon the therapist appear to become superficial again. Dependencies appear to be reduced as far as the therapist is
concerned. [K1955:681]

Related Glossary Terms

Counter Dependency Transference, Role Construct, Transference

Index Find Term

Transition
Transitions are changes, or the prospect of changes in one’s construction system, construed by the therapist by
means of diagnostic constructs.

When a person finds his personal construction failing him, he suffers anxiety. When he faces an impending upheaval in his core structure,
he experiences threat. A person who construes the construction system of another person sets the stage for playing a role in relation to that
person. When he finds himself dislodged from his role, he experiences guilt. This has much to do with social organization. Aggression is
merely the active pursuit of constructive experience, but it may be threatening to one's associates. Hostility, while not necessarily violent,
is the continued attempt to extort validational evidence in support of a personal construction which has already discredited itself.
[K1955:560-61]

Related Glossary Terms

Aggressiveness, Anxiety, Core Construct, Fear, Guilt, Hostility, Threat

Index Find Term

Transitive Diagnosis
Transitive diagnosis is [...] based on a dimensional system of axes and transitional states. [K1955:775]

The term transitive diagnosis [...] suggests that we are concerned with transitions in the client’s life, that we are looking for bridges be-
tween the client’s present and his future. Moreover, we expect to take an active part in helping the client select or build the bridges to be
used and in helping him cross them safely. The client does not ordinarily sit cooped up in a nosological pigeonhole; he proceeds along his
way. If the psychologist expects to help him he must get up off his chair and start moving along with him. [K1955:775]

Related Glossary Terms

Diagnostic Construct

Index Find Term

Validation/Invalidation
The result of the verification of an anticipation.

A person commits himself to anticipating a particular event If it takes place, his anticipation is validated. If it fails to take place, his anticipa-
tion is invalidated. Validation represents the compatibility (subjectively construed) between one's prediction and the outcome he observes.
Invalidation represents incompatibility (subjectively construed) between one's prediction and the outcome he observes. [K1955:158]

If a person makes only vague commitments to the future he receives only vague validational experience. If his commitments are incidental
and fragmentary, he experiences fragmentary validation only. If his commitments are based on far-reaching interpretations of the situa-
tion, he may construe the outcome as having sweeping significance. [K1955:160]

Related Glossary Terms

Anticipation, Experience Corollary, Experience Cycle, Hostility

Index Find Term