Personal Construct Theory and Concepts GEORGE KELLY By: Meagan Lilley

 Born April 28, 1905  His family was one of the last homesteaders of the American frontier  Patchwork education GEORGE KELLY

 Graduated with a degree in physics and mathematics  Got his Bachelor of Education degree at Edinburgh, Scotland  In 1931, he graduated from the University of Iowa with a PH.D. in psychology  His thesis was on speech and reading disabilities

 During time of the Great Depression/Dust Bowl  Taught School Psychology developing a program of traveling clinics  offered free assessment and consultation services to children  His work was so innovative that it was funded directly by an act of the state legislature  World War II- the aviation psychology branch in the U.S. Navy  Taught at University of Maryland  Directed the clinical psychology program at Ohio State University  For 20 years GEORGE KELLY

 Inspired by Korzybski’s general semantics and Monroe’s psychodrama  “The Psychology of Personal Constructs”  achieved immediate international recognition  Elected President of the Clinical and the Consulting Divisions of the APA  Served as President of the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology  He died on March 6, 1967 at the age of 61. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS

 The main view - is that a person's unique psychological processes are channeled by the way she or he anticipates events  Main drivers of our mind  anticipation  Prediction  "Every man is, in his own particular way, a scientist“  Start at birth and continue refining our theories as we grow up PERSONAL CONSTRUCT THEORY

 Theories are built up from a system of constructs  Our mind is filled up with these constructs, at a low level of awareness  He believed that some constructs are preverbal  A given person or set of people 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 CONSTRUCTS

 Constructs are applied to anything we put our attention to, and also strongly influence what we fix our attention on.  We interpret reality by making constructs  He believed in a non-invasive approach to psychotherapy  The therapist should just act as a facilitator of the patient CONTINUED…

 He developed the Repertory Grid Interview technique  First the patient selects about seven elements on the patient or therapist is trying to discover  The test requires the person to compare and contrast sets of three significant people  show some important way that two of the figures are alike, and different from the third REPERTORY GRID

 Repeating the procedure with different sets of three elements reveals several constructs the patient might not have been fully aware of  Rows represent constructs found  Columns represent the elements  A rating determines the position of each element within each construct  The format of the repertory grid basically guides the respondent in making their own questionnaire while showing comparisons across different people or groups REPERTORY GRID

 The blend of projective and objective testing has made the grid useful to both clinicians and scientists seeking to understand how different people and groups organize their view of themselves and the world REPERTORY GRID

REPERTORY GRID EXAMPLE

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