Personal Construct Theory Personal construct psychology (PCP) is a theory of personality and cognition developed by the American psychologist

George Kelly in the 1950s. From the theory, Kelly derived a psychotherapy approach and also a technique called The Repertory Grid Interview that helped his patients to uncover their own "constructs" (ways of seeing the world) with minimal intervention or interpretation by the therapist. The Repertory Grid was later adapted for various uses within organizations, including decision-making and interpretation of other people's worldviews. Kelly explicitly stated that each individual's task in understanding their personal psychology is to put in order the facts of his or her own experience. Then each of us, like the scientist, is to test the accuracy of that constructed knowledge by performing those actions the constructs suggest. If the results of our actions are in line with what the knowledge predicted then we have done a good job of finding the order in our personal experience. If not, then we can modify the construct: our interpretations or our predictions or both. This method of discovering and correcting our constructs is simply the scientific method used by all modern sciences to discover the truths about the universe we live in. People develop constructs as internal ideas of reality in order to understand the world around them. They are based on our interpretations of our observations and experiences. Every construct is bipolar, specifying how two things are similar to each other (lying on the same pole) and different from a third thing. They can be expanded with new ideas. Principles

A main tenet of PCP theory is that A person's unique psychological processes are channeled by the way s/he anticipates events. Kelly believed that anticipation and prediction are the main drivers of our mind. "Every man is, in his own particular way, a scientist,"[1] said Kelly, in that he is always building up and refining theories and models about how the world works so that he can anticipate events. We start on this at birth (a child discovers, "if I cry, mother will come") and continue refining our theories as we grow up. We build theories -often stereotypes- about other people and also try to control them or impose on others our own theories so that we are better able to predict their actions.

All these theories are built up from a system of constructs. A construct has two extreme points, such as "happy-sad" and we tend to place people at either extreme or at some point in between. Our mind, said Kelly, is filled up with these constructs, at a low level of awareness. Kelly did not use the concept unconscious, instead he believed that some constructs are preverbal, 'their lack of verbal labels often being because they were developed before the person had the use of words' (Winter, 1993, p.244). A given person or set of persons or any event or circumstance can be characterized fairly precisely by the set of constructs we apply to it and the position of the thing within the range of each construct. So Fred for instance may be just half between happy and sad (one construct) and definitively clever rather than stupid (another construct). The baby above may have a preverbal construct "Comes... doesn't come when I cry". Constructs are applied to anything we put our attention to, including ourselves, and also strongly influence what we fix our attention on. We construe reality constructing constructs. Hence, determining a person's system of constructs would go a long way towards understanding him, especially the person's essential constructs that represent very strong and unchangeable beliefs; and also the constructs a person applies to him/herself. Therapy Approach

Kelly believed in a non-invasive approach to psychotherapy. Rather than having the therapist interpret the persons psyche, which would amount to imposing the doctors constructs on the patient, the therapist should just act as a facilitator of the patient finding his own constructs. The patients behavior is then mainly explained as ways to selectively observe the world, act upon it and update the construct system in such a way as to increase predictability. To help the patient find his constructs, Kelly developed the Repertory Grid Interview technique. The Repertory Grid

To build a Repertory Grid (a sort of matrix) for a patient, Kelly would first ask the patient to select about seven elements whose nature might depend on whatever the patient or therapist are trying to discover. For instance, Two specific friends, two work -mates, two people you dislike, your mother and yourself, or something of that sort. Then, three of the elements would be selected at random, and then the therapist would ask:"In relation to (whatever is of interest), in which way two of these people are alike but different from the third"? The answer is

sure to indicate one of the extreme points of one of the patients constructs. He might say for instance that Fred and Sarah are very communicative whereas John isnt. Further questioning would reveal the other end of the construct (say, introvert) and the positions of the three characters between extremes. Repeating the procedure with different sets of three elements ends up revealing several constructs the patient might not have been fully aware of. The Repertory Grid itself is a matrix where the rows represent constructs found, the columns represent the elements, and cells indicate with a number the position of each element within each construct. There is software available to produce several reports and graphs from these Grids. Organizational applications of the Repertory Grid technique

PCP has always been a minority interest among psychologists. During the last 30 years, it has gradually gained adherents in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, Ireland, Italy and Spain. While its chief fields of application remain clinical and educational psychology, there is an increasing interest in its applications to organizational development, employee training and development, job analysis, job description and evaluation. The Repertory Grid is often used in the qualitative phase of market research, to identify the ways in which consumers construe products and services. Sumber: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_construct_theory

Personal Construct Theory - George KellyPersonal Construct Theory - George Kelly In 1955 George Kelly published "The Psychology of Personal Constructs" (Kelly, 1955). This was the culmination of more than twenty years pioneering work in psychology and is the synthesis of Kelly's own experiences, not only in the practice of clinical psychology but also in his wide-ranging educational background, receiving degrees in physics, mathematics, educational sociology, education and psychology. People use constructs to categorise people and situations they encounter. They are frequently bi-polar adjectives such as intelligent-dull, friendly-unfriendly, stable-unstable.

Each of us develop of own set we use in different situations to make evaluations. Our construct systems make our world more predictable; Our construct systems reflect our constant efforts to make sense of our world; Our construct systems can grow and change; Our construct systems influence our expectations and perceptions; Some constructs, and some aspects of our construct systems, are more important than others; [Some of our constructs - those which represent our core values and concern our key relationships - are complex, quite firmly fixed, wide-ranging, and difficult to change; others, about things which don't matter so much, or about which we haven't much experience, are simpler, narrower, and carry less personal commitment.] Your construct system is your truth as you understand and experience it - nobody else's; [A person's construct system represents the truth as they understand it. Construct systems cannot be judged in terms of their objective truth - whatever 'objective' means in the world of personal feelings and choices. When we meet someone whose construct system is different from our own - especially if we don't like it, or think it's wrong - we sometimes use words like prejudice or stereotype to convey our disagreement. We might try confronting them with opposing opinions or evidence, and get frustrated if we see them immunising their constructs instead of adapting them. But we have to accept that their system has worked, more or less, for them so far, and that if it is different from ours then that is a reflection of the fact that they've had different experiences, different reactions, and see different things as important.] Construct systems are not always internally consistent.

Sumber: http://www.pgce.soton.ac.uk/IT/Learning/Kelly/

What is Personal Construct Psychology? At least five features of personal construct psychology challenged existing psychological thinking when it was launched in 1955. Many of Kelly's ideas are still seen as radical in the third millennium. The Centre offers distance learning courses to anyone who is interested in learning more about personal construct psychology and its methods of inquiry and change. The Psychologys Essential Features Reflexivity In 1955, George Kelly presented personal construct theory as an alternative to the two main current approaches to human understanding - behaviourism and psychodynamic theories. Traditionally, research psychologists have looked at every one else as subjects rat her than as someone who, like themselves, is trying to make sense of events. Crucially, he suggested we need to change the very nature of how we view science if it is to be applied to human beings. Such 'reflexivity' in a theory of psychology was new and, even today, it is still unusual.. Kelly emphasised the importance of his theorising by relating it to his philosophy. He said we need to distinguish the old and the new type of science as the former being : . the view that science makes its progress step by step.we discover a fragment at a time (and) as each fragment is verified it is fitted into place much like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Some day well get it all put together, Kelly, in his tongue-in-cheek mode, called this "accumulative fragmentalism". The new science says that We understand our world by placing constructions on it. To this he gave the name of his philosophy "constructive alternativism". Don Bannister gave his view of Kellys different science like this: What does not seem to be commonly envisaged is that rather than traditional science moulding psychology, psychology might be the new venture which will remould science. When Gods have been thought to frown upon new undertakings, men have been known to alter their theology rather than abandon their undertakings. (Bannister, 1970) The person as scientist

Kelly suggested we look at people 'as if' they are scientists. We all conduct individual behavioural experiments to test out our current perceptions and interpretations of the world. He says Behavior is not the answer to the psychologists question; it is the question (Kelly, 1969, p. 21). If we do not like what we find as the result of our experiments, we can change - albeit not always easily. We are actors in life and not reactors as behaviourists see us. Since 1955 some have come to think that the metaphor of the scientist is too limiting. Fay Fransella has emphasised that it is important to keep Kellys idea that we are all active and use our behaviour to ask questions of the world. However, she suggested that we might use Kellys own alternative to the scientist model and talk of the person as inquirer. There have been other suggestions such as the person as explorer and the person as author. Constructivism All the above is spelled out in the philosophy Kelly called constructive alternativism. The philosophy underpins all his theory. There are always different ways to interpret or give meaning to any event. We need never be trapped by our past as we are all capable of reconstruing events. This philosophy has played a leading part in the revival of the philosophy of constructivism in psychology and psychotherapy today. Bipolarity of construing Kelly chose the word construct to differentiate it from concept. The crucial difference being that a construct has a specific opposite whereas a concept does not. Kelly argued that good only has meaning when related to bad.. Thus, all constructs are bipolar. This is especially important to bear in mind when looking at personal construct methods of inquiry particularly repertory grids. Understanding ourselves and others There is only one way to understand ourselves and that is to ask why we have done (or plan to do) certain things. We have to examine our own construing. It is the same with understanding others. We have to struggle to put ourselves into the shoes of the other person and look at the world through that persons eyes. Kelly provides us with a set of professional constructs to help us understand our own or someone elses construing. There is no

interpretation in Kellys theoretical system. There are no standard complexes to look for. Since all behaviour is seen as an experiment, we do not say that behaviour is aggressive, we instead ask what sort of answer does this person expect to receive by behaving like this? Kelly wanted to create a theory that could account for all that a human being might experience. He therefore actually wrote two theories. There is the basic theory spelled out rather like an engineers blueprint. It has a Fundamental Postulate that is elaborated by eleven corollaries. Each word in these is defined. Then there is the personal construct theory of how we experience events in which he deals with some emotions. We construe events and we experience and have feelings about those events. Kelly was determined to break our connection with Descartes dualism. He wanted to create a theory about the whole person. Kelly's Two Personal Construct Theories The Basic Theory This all centres on the idea of the construct. We actively construe every moment of our waking life and even when asleep and dreaming. Construing is about making sense of and interpreting events as they confront us. We do this by having observed in the past how some things are alike and thereby different from other things. Here is an essential feature of a personal construct. As already stated, Kelly was adamant that we cannot know something unless we know what it contrasts with. There can be no good without an awareness of what is bad. It is the essence of this basic theory that has been explained in terms of five of its essential features that made it so different from existing psychologies. However, some of these bi-polar constructs have words attached to them, and some do not, as has been mentioned earlier. Construing cannot therefore be equated with thinking or cognition. Some construing we only know exists because we feel it. For Kelly construing takes place at various levels of awareness. The Experiential Theory

In PCP terms, emotions are seen as happening when we know, at some level of awareness, of a problem with making sense of a particular event. For example, a teacher may be threatened if she is aware that several of the students are silently making fun of her. The threat is that she is aware at some level that if she accepts that she is a fun-figure rather than someone who should be taken seriously, then she will need to change a great deal of her present ways of seeing herself. Kelly is adamant that personal construct psychology is definitely not a cognitive theory. See his quotation above. In this experiential theory we have Kellys re-thinking of the idea of motivation. We are not responders to events nor are we driven by unconscious urges. We are not passive, we do not need to be motivated. Kelly deliberately did not follow Freud in saying that there is some form of psychic energy that pushes us into action. We are alive, and one essential of being alive is that we move. What we need to explain is why we move as we do. Kelly answers the question of whether his theory is a dynamic theory like Freuds by saying: No, it intentionally parts company with psychoanalysis. Personal construct theory sees each of us as active and alive rather than inert and driven. In fact, it is so dynamic that it does not need any special system of dynamics to keep it running. We only stop moving when we are dead. (Kelly, 1969. p. 89 see above) Some Methods of Inquiry Repertory grids George Kelly was not only a theorist and a practitioner of his theory, he was also a mathematician. It was that training that led him to create repertory grid technique to explore the ways in which individuals construe their worlds. The technique was highly original in combining mathematical (quantitative) and subjective (qualitative) data in the same method of measurement. Some ways of eliciting personal constructs (the qualitative data) include triadic, laddering, pyramiding and the ABC methods. Self characterisations

His other method of assessment, the self characterisation, is a subjective written account of how individuals see themselves. Kelly was once asked what it would be if he were to be remembered for just one thing. He said it would be for the self characterisation: because, if you dont know what is wrong with someone, ask them, they may tell you. This method of inquiry has been influential in the development of narrative psychology. The Validity of Personal Construct Psychology George Kelly argued that the validity of any theory is to be found in its usefulness. That usefulness has been tested in widely differing fields such as: linguistics; history; psychotherapy; speech therapy; management; organisational development; market research, sociology; human geography and psychiatry, not to mention psychology. Its usefulness has been shown by there now being practitioners all over the world. Bannister and Bott (1973) say: ".... if we substitute for validity the notion of usefulness, or at least make usefulness the central feature of validity, we shall be less concerned with the correlation between a test and some relatively arbitrary criterion and more concerned with the values which users of a test find in it." Sumber: http://www.centrepcp.co.uk/whatis.htm