Personality constructor theory by J Kelly. Personality construct theory by J. A. Kelly - Temple of Truth. Personal constructs: models for reality

The founder of the theory of personal constructs was an American psychologist George Kelly. He also founded the scientific school of psychology of personal constructs.

According to Kelly's theory, a person is a researcher who builds an image of reality based on his individual system of categorical scales - " personal constructs ". Based on this sample of reality, a person anticipates (constructs) hypotheses about future events. If these hypotheses are not confirmed, a person can rebuild his system of personal constructs to increase the adequacy of subsequent predictions.

Kelly developed methodological principle "repertory grids ", embodied in a number of specific psychodiagnostic techniques currently used in clinical psychology, educational psychology, etc.

Kelly's cognitive theory is based on the way in which individuals comprehend and interpret phenomena (or people) in their environment. Naming your approach personality construct theory, Kelly focuses on the psychological processes that allow people to organize and understand the events that occur in their lives.

In the Kelly system key theoretical construct- this is the term itself construct: "A person judges his mentality with the help of understandable systems, or models, which he creates and then tries to adapt to objective reality. This adaptation is not always successful. Yet, without such systems, the world will be something so undifferentiated and homogeneous that a person will not be able to comprehend it.".

It is the ethn "conceptual systems, or models" that Kelly defined as personality constructs. In other words, personality construct is an idea or thought that a person uses to make sense of or interpret, explain or predict his or her experience. Examples of personality constructs include "anxious - calm", "smart - stupid", "masculine - feminine", "religious - non-religious", "good - bad" in "friendly-hostile". These are just a few examples of the many constructs that a person uses to assess the meaning of experiences in your daily life.

Kelly suggested that all personality constructs bipolar And dichotomous by nature, that is, the essence of human thinking is to understand life experience in terms of black and white, and not shades of gray. More precisely, when experiencing events, a person notices that some events are similar to each other (they have common properties) and at the same time differ from others.

It is this cognitive process of observation similarities and differences leads to formation of personal constructs.

Like a magnet, all constructs have two opposite poles: pole of similarity construct (that in which they are opposed to the third element), and pole of contrast construct. The purpose of personality construct theory is to explain how people interpret and predict their life experiences in terms of similarities and differences.

Properties of constructs :

1) the construct affects a certain range of phenomena. This d range of applicability includes all events in which the construct is applicable. The construct “scientific - non-scientific,” for example, is quite applicable for interpreting many intellectual achievements, but is hardly suitable for explaining the advantages of being a married or single person.

2) each construct has focus of applicability. It refers to phenomena within the range of applicability. to which the construct is most applicable. For example, the construct “honest-dishonest” for one person has the focus of applicability that one should keep one’s hands away from other people’s money and property. And another person can apply the same construct to political events. Consequently, the focus of applicability of a construct is always specific to the person applying it.

Types of constructs:

1) The construct that standardizes (“preempts”) elements so that they are exclusively within its range, Kelly called proactive construct. Anticipatory interpretation can be compared with such a characteristic of a rigid person’s thinking as “nothing but.”

2) B constellatory construct elements may simultaneously belong to other areas, but they are constant in the composition of their sphere. That is, if a phenomenon belongs to the categories of one construct, its other characteristics are fixed (since we classify a person into a given category, we endow him with all the corresponding characteristics).

3) A construct that leaves its elements for alternative constructions is called presuppositional construct. This type of construct is directly opposite to the proactive and constellatory constructs, as it allows a person to be open to new experiences and accept an alternative point of view on the world. (In this case, the interpretation of someone as a car salesman is so presumptive that his other personal qualities do not follow from it.)

Classification of constructs:

1) Comprehensive constructs include a relatively wide range of phenomena.

2) Private constructs include a small range of phenomena.

3) Basic constructs regulate basic human activities.

4) Peripheral can change without significantly changing the underlying structure.

5) Hard - giving an unchanged forecast.

6) Available allow making different forecasts under similar conditions.

Definition of personality in Kelly's theory: personality represents an organizational system of more or less important constructs; a person uses personality constructs to interpret the world of experiences and anticipate future events. For Kelly, personality is equivalent to constructs used by an individual for the purpose of predicting the future. To understand another person, you need to know something about the constructs he uses, the events included in those constructs, and how they relate to each other.

George Kelly was one of the first personologists to emphasize cognitive processes as a fundamental feature of human functioning. In accordance with his theoretical system, called the psychology of personal constructs, a person is essentially a scientist, a researcher who seeks to understand, interpret, anticipate and control the world of his personal experiences in order to effectively interact with it. This view of man as a researcher underlies Kelly's theoretical constructions, as well as modern cognitive orientation in personality psychology.

Kelly strongly advised his fellow psychologists not to view subjects as passive organisms “reacting” to external stimuli. He reminded them that the subjects behaved in the same way as scientists, drawing conclusions from past experiences and making assumptions about the future.

Basics of Cognitive Theory

All personality theories are based on certain philosophical principles about human nature. Those. The personologist’s view of the essence of human nature has a great influence on the personality model he developed. Unlike many personality theorists, George Kelly clearly recognized that all conceptions of human nature, including his own, start from basic assumptions. He built his theory of personality on the basis of a holistic philosophical position - constructive alternativeism.

Constructive alternativeism. Kelly's underlying philosophy of constructive alternativeism gives people a surprising number of opportunities to choose alternatives to the banal. In fact, this philosophy even requires people to do so.

As a doctrine, constructive alternativeism argues "that our entire modern interpretation of the world needs to be revised or replaced." Nothing is sacred and nothing leaves an indelible mark. There are no policies, religions, economic principles, social benefits, or even foreign policies towards third world countries that are absolutely and indisputably “true.” Everything will change if people just look at the world from a different perspective. Kelly argued that there is no such thing in the world about which “there can be no two opinions.” A person's awareness of reality is always a subject for interpretation. According to Kelly, objective reality certainly exists, but different people perceive it differently. Therefore, nothing is permanent or final. Truth, like beauty, exists only in the human mind.

Since facts and events (like all human experience) exist only in the human mind, there is various ways their interpretations. People are given a magnificent range of possibilities in interpreting the inner world of experiences or the outer world of practical events. Kelly summed up his commitment to constructive alternativeism as follows: "...whatever nature may be or whatever the search for truth may ultimately turn out to be, we are today confronted with facts for which we can give as many explanations as our minds can come up with."

The intriguing nature of constructive alternativeism can be further appreciated when compared to one of Aristotle's philosophical principles. Aristotle puts forward the principle of identity: A is A. A thing in itself and outside itself is experienced and interpreted in the same way by every person. For example, a car parked across the street remains the same physical object, regardless of who is looking at it. It follows from this that the facts of social reality are the same for everyone. Kelly believes that A is what the individual explains as A! Reality is what we interpret as reality, facts can always be viewed from different perspectives. Then, to be consistent, there is no true or valid way of interpreting human behavior. Whether we are trying to understand another person's behavior, or our own, or the very nature of the universe, there are always "constructive alternatives" open to our minds. Moreover, the concept of constructive alternativeism suggests that our behavior is never completely determined.

We are always free to some extent to revise or replace our interpretation of reality. However, at the same time, Kelly believes that some of our thoughts and behavior are determined by previous events. That is, as will soon become quite obvious, cognitive theory is built at the intersection of freedom and determinism. In Kelly's words: "Determinism and freedom are inseparable, since what determines the one is, by the same token, freedom from the other."

People as explorers. Kelly attached great importance how people understand and interpret their life experiences. Construct theory focuses on the processes that enable people to understand the psychological domain of their lives. This brings us to Kelly's model of personality, based on the analogy of a person as a researcher: like a scientist who studies a certain phenomenon, any person puts forward working hypotheses about reality, with the help of which he tries to anticipate and control the events of life, he monitors whether the hypotheses are confirmed or no, involving in this activity the same mental processes as a scientist during a scientific search. Thus, the theory of personal constructs is based on the premise that science is the quintessence of those methods and procedures with the help of which each of us puts forward new ideas about the world. The purpose of science is to predict, change and understand events, i.e. The main goal of a scientist is to reduce uncertainty. But not only scientists - all people have such goals. We are all interested in anticipating the future and making plans based on expected results.

Personal constructs: models for reality. Scientists create theoretical constructs to describe and explain the events they study.

A personality construct is an idea or thought that a person uses to understand or interpret, explain or predict his or her experience. A personal construct is a classification and evaluative standard created by a person on the basis of his experience. It represents a stable way in which a person comprehends some aspects of reality in terms of similarity and contrast. Examples of personality constructs include anxious-calm, smart-stupid, masculine-feminine, religious-non-religious, good-bad, and friendly-hostile. These are just a few examples of the countless constructs that a person uses. to evaluate the significance of phenomena in your daily life.

According to Kelly, each of us perceives reality through our own models or constructs necessary to create a consistent picture of the world.

If a construct helps accurately predict events, the person is likely to retain it. Conversely, if a prediction is not confirmed, the construct on which it was made is likely to be revised or even eliminated altogether. Construct validity is tested in terms of its predictive effectiveness, the extent of which may vary.

Kelly assumed that all personality constructs are bipolar and dichotomous in nature, i.e. The essence of human thinking is to understand life experiences in terms of black or white, rather than shades of gray. More precisely, when experiencing events, a person notices that some events are similar to each other (they have common properties) and at the same time differ from others. For example, a person may notice that some people are fat and some are skinny; some are rich and some are poor; Some things are dangerous to touch, but some are not. It is this cognitive process of observing similarities and differences that leads to the formation of personality constructs. Like a magnet, all constructs have two opposite poles.

Formal properties of constructs. Kelly proposed that all constructs are characterized by certain formal properties.

1. First, all constructs have a limited range of applicability, although the boundaries of the range may vary from construct to construct. The good-bad construct has a wide range of applicability, since it involves many situations that require personal assessment. And the construct “purity-prostitution” has much narrower boundaries.
2. Secondly, each construct has a focus of applicability. It refers to the phenomena within the range of applicability to which the construct is most applicable. For example, the construct “honest-dishonest” for one person has the focus of applicability that one should keep one’s hands away from other people’s money and property. And another person can apply the same construct to political events. Consequently, the focus of applicability of a construct is always specific to the person applying it.
3. Permeability-impermeability is another parameter along which constructs can differ. A permeable construct admits into its range of applicability elements that have not yet been interpreted within its boundaries. He is open to explaining new phenomena. The construct of “competent doctor - incompetent doctor” in one person can be quite permeable to the interpretation of any new doctor he meets, i.e., by communicating with any new doctor for some time, a person can understand whether he is competent or incompetent. But another person can make the same construct completely impenetrable by insisting that there are no more competent doctors, that the last competent doctor was his pediatrician, who has already died. Consequently, the distinction between competent and incompetent doctors is no longer relevant to him. All doctors are incompetent! Note that permeability refers only to the range of applicability of a construct—a construct is, by definition, impermeable to any experience outside its range of applicability. Thus, the concept of “competent-incompetent” does not make sense when judging the taste of crabs.

Personality: a construct of a personologist. Kelly believed that personality is an abstraction created by personologists from the mental processes they observe and/or imply in others. This is not a separate reality discovered by them. In addition, he argued that personality by its nature is included in a person's interpersonal relationships. By combining these two ideas, a more precise definition of personality can be given: the personality of an individual represents an organized system of more or less important constructs; a person uses personality constructs to interpret the world of experiences and anticipate future events.

To understand another person, you need to know something about the constructs he uses, the events included in those constructs, and how they relate to each other. Knowing personality means learning how a person interprets his or her personal experiences.

The main postulate and some conclusions from it

The basic tenet is that behavior is determined by how people predict future events. In other words, all human behavior (thoughts and actions) is aimed at predicting events. The postulate also implies that Kelly is interested in the person as such, and not some certain aspects his behavior (for example, intergroup relations). The expression "personality processes" suggests that a person is an organism in development, and not an inert substance influenced by unconscious impulses or prompted to action by environmental stimuli.

Kelly noted that each person creates and uses different channels (constructs) in a characteristic way, and also that the choice of a particular channel determines his mental processes.

Like a scientist, a person tries to explain reality in order to learn to anticipate events that affect his life. It is this consideration that explains the focus of activity in Kelly's theory. According to it, people look at the present in such a way as to foresee the future using a unique system of their personal constructs.

Conclusions from the main postulate

According to Kelly, in addition to the fact that personality constructs have distinctive features, they are organized differently in a person: “Each person specifically develops, in accordance with his ability to predict events, a system of analysis that determines ranking relationships between constructs.” People differ from each other not only in the number and type of constructs they use in their judgments about the world, but also in the way they organize their constructs. It would be a mistake to think that constructs are randomly crowded into a person’s consciousness and each is applied separately.

The O-V-I cycle. Kelly introduced various models to illustrate human actions in the face of a new or uncertain situation. The key point is the orientation-selection-execution (O-S-I) cycle, which consists of sequentially thinking through several possible constructs and choosing the one that turns out to be the best for interpreting the situation.

A design system changes if it cannot correctly predict the unfolding sequence of events. In this regard, Kelly postulates that change in our construct system occurs when we encounter new or unfamiliar phenomena that are inconsistent with our previous construct system.

A system of personal constructs is a set of hypotheses about our ever-changing world, which are constantly tested by experience. Feedback about how well these hypotheses helped us predict the future leads to changes in constructs, which in turn are used as new hypotheses to consistently change the system. Those constructs that prove useful are retained, while the rest are revised or discarded. Thus, according to Kelly, the design system is consistently revised with informed selection to make the right decisions.

"If a person interprets experience in some way similar to how another person does, then his mental processes are similar to the mental processes of the other person. So, if two people share views on the world (i.e. are similar in their interpretation personal experience), they will probably behave similarly (i.e. they will have similar personalities). It should be noted that people are similar not because they have experienced the same events in life, and not because their behavior is similar - they are similar because the events have approximately the same psychological meaning for them. Consistent with his cognitive orientation, Kelly relies on interpretation rather than past experience or observed behavior.

The conclusion about community formulated by Kelly is very important for the field of human relations. In particular, he suggests a possible, unifying connection between individual and social psychology. The unconditional assertion that stable and sincere human relationships cannot develop unless at least one of the people tries to step into the shoes of the other can explain the communication problems that people have in a variety of situations, ranging from everyday conversations (with parents, relatives, friends, neighbors) and ending with international affairs. A world without war may ultimately depend on the ability of people (especially heads of state) to accurately analyze the interpretative processes of others.

Kelly's cognitive theory is based on the way in which individuals comprehend and interpret phenomena (or people) in their environment. Calling his approach personality construct theory, Kelly focuses on the psychological processes that allow people to organize and understand the events that occur in their lives.

Personal constructs: models for reality

Scientists create theoretical constructs to describe and explain the events they study. In Kelly's system, the key theoretical construct is the term construct itself:

A person judges his world with the help of conceptual systems, or models, which he creates and then tries to adapt to objective reality. This adaptation is not always successful. Yet, without such systems, the world will be something so undifferentiated and homogeneous that a person will not be able to comprehend it.

It was these “conceptual systems or models” that Kelly defined as personal constructs. In other words, a personality construct is an idea or thought that a person uses to understand or interpret, explain or predict his experience. It represents a stable way in which a person comprehends some aspects of reality in terms of similarity and contrast. Examples of personality constructs include anxious-calm, smart-stupid, masculine-feminine, religious-non-religious, good-bad, and friendly-hostile. These are just a few examples of the countless constructs that a person uses. to evaluate the significance of phenomena in your daily life.

As an example of constructs in action, let's look at how different people can explain the same event. A recent college graduate, instead of going to graduate school as he had previously planned, packs up his things and goes with his girlfriend to live in a remote community. Father young man could explain such an act as “upsetting” or “disappointing,” and his mother would declare that her son was “living in sin.” His college counselor, well versed in Erikson's theory, may think he did it "in search of his identity," and his sociology professor may believe he is simply "rejecting the norms of a society geared toward young professionals." The young man himself may view this act as “natural,” as “what needed to be done at that moment.” Which explanation is correct? Kelly's theory has no answer. In his opinion, the whole point is that each of us perceives reality through our own models or constructs necessary to create a consistent picture of the world.

In accordance with the idea of people as scientists, Kelly argues that as soon as a person assumes that with the help of a given construct one can adequately forecast and predict some event in his environment, he will begin to test this assumption against events that have not yet occurred. If a construct helps accurately predict events, the person is likely to retain it. Conversely, if a prediction is not confirmed, the construct on which it was made is likely to be revised or even eliminated altogether (remember our example of the professor who was initially rated as “unbiased”). Construct validity is tested in terms of its predictive effectiveness, the extent of which may vary.

Kelly proposed that all personality constructs are bipolar and dichotomous in nature, that is, the essence of human thinking is to understand life experiences in terms of black or white, rather than shades of gray. More precisely, when experiencing events, a person notices that some events are similar to each other (they have common properties) and at the same time differ from others. For example, a person may notice that some people are fat and some are skinny; some are black and some are white; some are rich and some are poor; Some things are dangerous to touch, but some are not. It is this cognitive process of observing similarities and differences that leads to the formation of personality constructs. Thus, at least three elements (phenomena or objects) are necessary to form a construct: two of the elements of the construct must be similar to each other, and the third element must be different from these two. The construct can be formed if we see that Gene and Louise are honest and Martha is not; or if we think that Jean and Louise are attractive but Martha is not. Both similarity and difference must occur within the same context.

Like a magnet, all constructs have two opposite poles. That in which two elements are considered similar or similar is called the emergent pole or similarity pole of a construct; that in which they are opposite to the third element is called the implicit pole, or pole of contrast of the construct. Consequently, each construct has emergent and implicit poles. The goal of personality construct theory is to explain how people interpret and predict their life experiences in terms of similarities and differences.

Unfortunately, Kelly abandoned the study of the processes by which a person interprets his life experiences in a particular direction. He simply did not take into account the question of individual differences in relation to the origin and development of personal constructs. To a certain extent this is understandable, since Kelly's theory is "ahistorical" in the sense that it does not emphasize a person's past life experiences. However, constructs must come from something, and the most reasonable assumption seems to be that they are products of previous experience. It is likely that variation in individual construct systems can be explained by differences in past life experiences.

Formal properties of constructs

Kelly proposed that all constructs are characterized by certain formal properties. First, a construct resembles a theory in that it addresses a specific range of phenomena. This range of applicability includes all events for which the construct is relevant or applicable. The “scientific-non-scientific” construct, for example, is quite applicable to interpreting many intellectual achievements, but is hardly suitable for explaining the advantages of being a married or single person. Kelly noted that the predictive power of a construct is seriously jeopardized whenever it is generalized beyond the set of phenomena for which it is intended. Consequently, all constructs have a limited range of applicability, although the boundaries of the range may vary from construct to construct. The good-bad construct has a wide range of applicability, since it involves many situations that require personal assessment. And the construct “purity-prostitution” has much narrower boundaries.

Secondly, each construct has a focus of applicability. It refers to the phenomena within the range of applicability to which the construct is most applicable. For example, the construct “honest-dishonest” for one person has the focus of applicability that one should keep one’s hands away from other people’s money and property. And another person can apply the same construct to political events. Consequently, the focus of applicability of a construct is always specific to the person applying it.

Permeability-impermeability is another parameter along which constructs may differ. A permeable construct admits into its range of applicability elements that have not yet been interpreted within its boundaries. He is open to explaining new phenomena. On the other hand, an impenetrable construct, while embracing the phenomena that form its original basis, remains closed to the interpretation of new experience. There is a relative degree of permeability and impermeability. The construct of “competent doctor-incompetent doctor” in one person can be quite permeable to the interpretation of any new doctor he meets, that is, by communicating with any new doctor for some time, a person can understand whether he is competent or incompetent. But another person can make the same construct completely impenetrable by insisting that there are no more competent doctors, that the last competent doctor was his pediatrician, who has already died. Consequently, the distinction between competent and incompetent doctors is no longer relevant to him. All doctors are incompetent! Note that permeability refers only to the range of applicability of a construct—a construct is, by definition, impermeable to any experience outside its range of applicability. Thus, the concept of “competent-incompetent” does not make sense when judging the taste of crabs.

Types of constructs. Kelly also proposed that personality constructs can be classified according to the nature of the control they implicitly exercise over their elements. The construct that standardizes (“preempts”) elements so that they are exclusively within its range is what Kelly called a preemptive construct. This is a type of classification construct; what is included in one classification is excluded from another. Anticipatory interpretation can be compared with such a characteristic of a rigid person’s thinking as “nothing but.” An example of an anticipatory construct would be an ethnic label. Say, if a person is identified as "Mexican", then he will be thought of only as a Mexican and nothing else. Or, if a professor is labeled "stubborn", some students will not even think of him differently (that he, for example, may have tender feelings for his children or be actively interested in the issue of social reform). Anticipatory thinking denies the right to revision or different interpretation for others or for oneself, preventing one from seeing the phenomenon being evaluated in a new light.

In a constellatory construct, elements can simultaneously belong to other areas, but they are constant in the composition of their sphere. That is, if a phenomenon belongs to some category of one construct, its other characteristics are fixed. Template thinking exemplifies this type of construct. An example of constellatory thinking: “If this person is a car salesman, he is most likely dishonest, fraudulent, and skillful with his customers.” In this example there is no room for other judgments about this person. By definition, constellatory constructs limit our possibilities for alternative opinions; Once we classify a person into a given category, we endow him with all the characteristics corresponding to it.

A construct that leaves its elements open to alternative constructions is called a presumptive construct. This type of construct is directly opposite to the proactive and constellatory constructs, as it allows a person to be open to new experiences and accept an alternative point of view on the world. In this case, the interpretation of someone as a car salesman is so presumptive that his other personal qualities do not follow from it. Therefore, affirmative thinking is flexible thinking. The individual is open to new experiences and can change existing constructs. Although it is tempting to interpret the anticipatory and constellatory constructs as undesirable types and the presumptive construct as desirable, Kelly argued that this is not the case. If we only used presumptive constructs, we would experience a lot of difficulties, since we would not be able to make immediate decisions.

As an example, imagine that when playing baseball the ball flies towards your head. You can begin to interpret the ball speculatively by looking at it from all angles. But when he hits you in the face, you will see that it would be much better under such circumstances to interpret the ball proactively (that is, decide that the ball that is heading towards your head is a ball that is heading towards your head, and nothing more). . However, Kelly believed that if we do not want to ossify intellectually, we must engage in conjectural thinking. Without it, we would be doomed to an unchangeable, stereotyped and ineffective way of understanding reality. Thus, anticipatory, constellatory, and conjectural forms of thinking are necessary to explain phenomena, things and people. Positive thinking is simply the opposite of the anticipatory and constellatory way of understanding reality.

Personality constructs can be classified in several ways. For example, there are comprehensive constructs, which include a relatively wide range of phenomena, and specific constructs, which include a small range of phenomena (that is, having a narrower range of possibilities). There are core constructs that regulate basic human activity, and peripheral constructs that can change without significantly changing the basic structure. And finally, some constructs are rigid, that is, they give a constant forecast, while others are free, since they allow different forecasts to be made under similar conditions.

Personality: a construct of a personologist

Kelly never offered a precise definition of the term "personality." However, he discussed this concept in one article, arguing that personality is "our abstraction of a person's activity and the subsequent generalization of this abstraction to all aspects of its relationship with other people, familiar and unfamiliar, and with that which may be of some value." Consequently, Kelly believed that personality is an abstraction created by personologists from the mental processes they observe and/or imply in others. This is not a separate reality discovered by them. In addition, he argued that personality by its nature is included in a person's interpersonal relationships. By combining these two ideas, we can give a more precise definition of personality in Kelly's theory, namely: the personality of an individual represents an organized system of more or less important constructs; a person uses personality constructs to interpret the world of experiences and anticipate future events. For Kelly, personality is equivalent to constructs used by an individual for the purpose of predicting the future. To understand another person, you need to know something about the constructs he uses, the events included in those constructs, and how they relate to each other. In short, to know personality is to know how a person interprets his personal experiences.

Motivation: who needs it?

Psychologists have traditionally used the concept of motivation to explain two aspects of behavior: a) why people behave actively and b) why their activity is directed towards one thing and not another. From Kelly's point of view, the term "motivation" implies that people are static by nature and act only when they are inspired by some special force. He himself rejected the concept that people are inert or reactive by nature and begin to act only under the influence of internal or external forces. According to Kelly, people have no other reason for motivation than the fact that they are alive. Indeed, the essence of life is movement or development; people represent one form of this all-pervasive movement. Based on this, no special concept (for example, drives, needs, instincts, rewards, motives) is required to explain what causes or motivates human behavior.

Kelly's objection to using the concept of motivation to explain behavior came from his experience as a practicing psychotherapist. As it turned out, in order to help patients, it is not necessary to attribute any motives to them. Motivational concepts are interpretations of what psychotherapists discover in their patients' behavior. They may be useful for predicting behavior (for example, Pamela is lazy and therefore may not finish school on time), but they are useless for understanding and helping a person because they reflect the view of the therapist, not the patient. Kelly further noted that motivational statements are more characteristic of the person making them than of the person whose motives are being discussed: “When we see a person who is preoccupied with searching for motives, it usually turns out that he is one of those who feels threatened by his colleagues , and wants to put them in their place."

Kelly characterizes modern theories of motivation and contrasts them with his point of view as follows:

Motivation theories can be divided into two types - push theories and pull theories. In push theory one can find terms such as drive, motive or even stimulus. Traction theory uses constructs such as goal, value, or need. To use a well-known metaphor, there are the fork theories on the one hand and the carrot theories on the other. But our theory does not apply to any of them. Since we prefer to look into the nature of the living thing itself, our theory is probably best called the donkey theory.

The theory of personal constructs considers a person as an active and thinking organism simply because he is alive. Therefore, “motivation” is a redundant construct.

Why, completely denying motivation as driving force human activity, Kelly explained its direction? The answer is to be found in his basic postulate, which we will discuss in the next section.

The main postulate and some conclusions from it

The formal structure of personality construct theory is very succinct because Kelly developed his central principles using one basic postulate and 11 conclusions that follow from it. We first describe the basic postulate and then discuss implications that complement our explanation of Kelly's cognitive position.

Basic postulate

It turns out that each personologist has his own language for describing human behavior. Kelly is no exception, and this can be seen in the example of his main postulate: “Personality processes are channels laid out in the psyche, along which a person predicts events.” This postulate forms the basis of Kelly's theory, since it treats personality and behavior in a completely different way than most other schools of thought. It is fundamental to Kelly's formal system, so to better understand it, let's take a closer look at it. The basic tenet is that behavior is determined by how people predict future events. In other words, all human behavior (thoughts and actions) is aimed at predicting events. The postulate also implies that Kelly is interested in the person as such, and not in some individual aspects of his behavior (for example, intergroup relations). The expression "personality processes" suggests that a person is an organism in development, and not an inert substance influenced by unconscious impulses or prompted to action by environmental stimuli (recall Kelly's "donkey" view of human motivation). Kelly likens man to an explorer and believes that people are governed by their future-oriented constructs.

Kelly's basic postulate also shows that his system lies within psychology and its range of applicability is limited to understanding human behavior. The expression "patterned channels" means that behavior is relatively stable across time and situations. Kelly believed that people acted within a network of paths or canals rather than worrying about an unpredictable void. In other words, people lay out or direct their processes to prevent the future.

The word “channels” is synonymous with the word constructs, and the mention of personality highlights the individuality of interpretation of phenomena. Regarding the latter, Kelly noted that each person creates and uses different channels (constructs) in a characteristic way, and also that the choice of a particular channel determines his mental processes. Finally, the expression “predicts events” reflects the predictive and motivational features inherent in cognitive theory. Like a scientist, a person tries to explain reality in order to learn to anticipate events that affect his life. It is this consideration that explains the focus of activity in Kelly's theory. According to it, people look at the present in such a way as to foresee the future using a unique system of their personal constructs.

Conclusions from the main postulate

Eleven conclusions that can be drawn from the basic postulate serve to develop Kelly's theory of personality constructs. Next we will discuss the most important of them.

Individuality and organization. The personality inference is particularly useful for understanding the uniqueness of personality: “People differ from each other in the way they interpret events.” According to Kelly, two people, even if they are identical twins or even if they have similar views, approach an event and interpret it differently. Each person understands reality from the “bell tower” of his unique personal construct. So, the difference between people is that they interpret events from different angles. There are a large number of examples showing that each person’s construct system is unique. Consider the traditional differences of opinion between political liberals and conservatives on such issues as welfare, military invasion of foreign territory, abortion, taxes, forced national integration, pornography and capital punishment. Or think about why students might disagree with professors, professors with department heads, department heads with deans, and all of them with the college president. Or what is called the “problem of fathers and sons” - a discrepancy in views between people of different generations - a situation that in Kelly’s theory can more accurately be called a “discrepancy in personal construct.” In all of these examples, people disagree because everyone is operating within their own construct system. No wonder people can't agree with each other - from Kelly's point of view, they're not even talking about the same thing!

According to Kelly, in addition to the fact that personal constructs have distinctive features, they are organized differently in a person. This is clearly stated in his conclusion about organization: “Each person specifically develops, in accordance with his ability to predict events, a system of analysis that determines the rank relations between constructs.” This finding suggests that people organize their personality constructs hierarchically to minimize incompatibility and inconsistencies. More importantly, it implies that people differ from each other not only in the number and type of constructs they use in their judgments about the world, but also in the way they organize their constructs. In short, it would be a mistake to think that constructs are randomly crowded into a person’s consciousness and each is applied separately.

According to Kelly, the organization of personality constructs is very logical: the constructs are organized in a pyramidal structure so that some of them are either in a subordinate or subordinate position relative to other parts of the system. (Of course, a construct can be completely independent of all others.) A subordinate construct includes other constructs, and a subordinate construct is included in another (subordinate) construct. The good-bad construct, for example, may include both poles of the sexual-non-sexual construct. Consequently, the first construct subordinates the latter. This idea can be illustrated by the example of a sexist man who analyzes a girl - the model of the month in Playboy magazine. He may interpret her as "sexy" and therefore, in terms of the subordinating construct, as "good." But even in the constructive system of the most complete sexist, “good” usually means more than “sexy.” For example, he may interpret an interview of the month in the same magazine as "good" because it "inspired" him. In this case, the constructs “sexual-non-sexual” and “inspiring-not inspiring” will be subordinate to the subordinate construct “good-bad”. But the main thing here is that people create different hierarchies of personal constructs. Subordinate and subordinate constructs in the system of one person do not necessarily occupy the same position in the system of another. Kelly suggested that only if we know how a person organizes constructs can we make correct judgments about his behavior.

However, Kelly believed that the hierarchical relationships of constructs are not constant. The organization of constructs retains a connection with events only when it has predictive effectiveness, which is also true for the constructs themselves. Indeed, Kelly considered it entirely acceptable that two constructs exchange places in the hierarchy, and a subordinate construct can become a subordinate one and vice versa. For example, a person once felt that “to love and not to love” includes (among others) the construct “accept and reject.” However, as a result of subsequent experience, a person may come to a different conclusion, namely: the meaning of “acceptance” is much more fundamental and broader, and “loving” is in a subordinate position in relation to it. Consequently, the hierarchical construction of constructs should not be understood as inert or complete.

To interpret or not to interpret: that is the question. From Kelly's point of view, people have several constructs with which they interpret the events of their lives. Moreover, every day they must choose which construct and which pole of it to use to predict events. The choice inference shows how a person makes this selection: “A person chooses for himself that alternative in a dichotomous construct with the help of which, as he expects, he will have greater opportunities for expanding and defining his system.” So, according to Kelly, if we are faced with a choice (that is, faced with a situation in which we must use our constructs in one way or another), we will choose that which is most likely to either expand our understanding of the world or clarify our construct system. In other words, we will choose the pole of the construct that will allow us to understand the event more fully - that which will be most useful for the predictive effectiveness of our construct system. Kelly called it a "thoughtful choice."

The selection inference also suggests that our design system is being developed either in the direction of definition or in the direction of expansion. The definition involves choosing an alternative with a greater likelihood of validating aspects of experience that have already been appropriately accurately interpreted. That is, a person, without much risk to himself, waits to see how events will turn out, based on previous experience, and then sees what comes of it. If the expected event occurs and the construct system is confirmed, then the construct is further strengthened by the fact that it leads to a correct prediction. Therefore, definition involves using a construct in a familiar way, by applying it to the event that best fits it. Another type of elaboration, expansion, involves selecting an alternative that is more likely to expand our understanding of events (increase the range of applicability of the construct). If the prediction is correct, then the construct becomes valid and, at least temporarily, more widely applicable. Of course, extension provides more room for predictive error than definition, since it uses constructs to predict an event that was previously unknown to it. But still it gives more information than the definition.

Kelly characterizes the difference between definition and expansion as either safety or risk. People must constantly decide which of these two ways will further shape their personality constructs. College students, for example, must often choose between courses that are similar to those they have previously taken, and therefore have some guarantee of getting acceptable grades, and unfamiliar courses, where there is a risk of failure, but which offer the opportunity to expand. knowledge. An "easy" course in a familiar subject means "safe," but organic chemistry is "risky" for most students. In this example, if the student chooses an alternative that minimizes risk, the construct system (if valid) is strengthened and defined. However, if a student chooses an alternative that will expand his system, this is fraught with great risk - there is a possibility that he will not be able to correctly predict events (for example, pass exams). At the same time, of course, the opportunity to acquire additional information that will be useful for future forecasts increases.

Although Kelly described in detail the signs that allow us to know whether a person is defining or expanding his construct system, we still do not have sufficient empirical facts or theoretical justifications to understand why and when he will choose one rather than another. However, it is likely that people who are confident in their prediction of events and can afford the risk of being wrong are likely to choose to expand their construct system. And people who are unsure of the correct forecast of events will most likely choose a definition. Transient situational factors may also influence the choice of extension or definition. For example, if a person is bored, this will lead to choosing an extension, and if he is upset, this will lead to choosing a definition. Whichever of the two processes takes place at a given time will ultimately determine whether a person is motivated by safety or risk.

In the orienting phase, a person considers several constructs that can be used to interpret a given situation—that is, he deliberately thinks about the various possibilities that might occur. This is similar to looking at an issue from all sides. The choice phase occurs when a person limits the number of alternative constructs (hypotheses) to the number that is most appropriate in a given situation. At this point, he decides which advantageous alternatives are most appropriate to use. Finally, during the execution phase, he chooses a course of action and the accompanying behavior. The choice is made, in other words, on the basis of an assessment of which alternative construct is most likely to lead to the expansion or definition of the system.

Kelly noted that a person may go through a number of O-W-I cycles before deciding which construct to use to interpret a situation. He cites Hamlet as the classic example of a person who, after being preempted (“To be or not to be, that is the question...”) cannot make up his mind to make a final choice and instead returns to the indicative phase of the cycle. Concept cycle O-V-I is consistent with Kelly's belief that we continually consider existing alternatives, limit their choices to those optimal for action, and act on our choices. Thus, if we simply change our constructs, we can, without exaggeration, change our lives; The possibilities of choice in Kelly's theoretical system are astonishing. Kelly, however, also insists that since the world is multidimensional, and a person has a number of different categorical scales in his constructive system, before acting, he is forced to sort them until one dichotomous choice parameter is presented. From Kelly's point of view, when a person says “it is important to choose between this and that,” only then is he ready to develop a life strategy. After all, we must be able to analyze in order to function intelligently.

Change in the structural system. A constructive system allows a person to predict future events as accurately as possible. It follows that a construct system changes if it cannot be used to correctly predict the unfolding sequence of events. In this regard, Kelly postulates that change in our construct system occurs when we encounter new or unfamiliar phenomena that are inconsistent with our previous construct system. His conclusion about experience states: "A person's constructive system changes in accordance with the success of the interpretation of repeated phenomena."

The so-called learning inference suggests that a personality construct system is a set of hypotheses about our ever-changing world that are constantly tested by experience. Feedback about how well these hypotheses helped us predict the future leads to changes in constructs, which in turn are used as new hypotheses to consistently change the system. Those constructs that prove useful are retained, while the rest are revised or discarded. Thus, according to Kelly, the design system is consistently revised with informed selection to make the right decisions.

According to Kelly, a person's experience is a restructuring of his life, based on the revision of constructs under the influence of current events. This means that a person gains little or no experience if, after observing the actual sequence of events, he still interprets events in the old way. For example, if a professor has been teaching his subject for 10 years and has been giving the same lectures all those years, doing it the same way as he did in his first year of teaching, Kelly would ask whether he actually has ten years of teaching experience. On the other hand, if what he taught in the first year caused him to change and improve his teaching in the second year and do so consistently for all ten years, he legally can claim to have ten years of teaching experience.

Kelly's conclusion about modulation clarifies the conditions under which a person's construct system changes: "Change in a person's construct system is limited by the permeability of constructs within the range of applicability in which these changes lie." As already indicated, the concept of "permeability" refers to the degree to which a construct can assimilate new experience and events within their range of applicability. Thus, this conclusion implies that the more permeable (open) a person's subordinating constructs are, the greater the possibility of change within the structures to which they relate. If a person does not have subordinating constructs for the interpreted change, then the change cannot take place in his system. Such a person is psychologically rigid. Therefore, a person must be able not only to interpret new events or revise old ones, but also to analyze the change itself. In other words, since a change in a construct or set of constructs is itself an event, a person must have some kind of conceptual structure in order to interpret changes in his construct system. Otherwise there will be not change, but chaos.

For example, a 21-year-old man interprets his relationship with his mother, continuing to react to her as a “mama's boy,” that is, overly dependent. It is obvious that he will face great difficulties in life if he does not change the interpretation of this relationship. He will be able to do this if he has a permeable subordinating construct of “maturity-immaturity” that he can apply in this situation. He may then interpret himself as "mature" and begin to respond to his mother differently, that is, less dependently. In essence, he will interpret his attitude towards his mother differently from the point of view of applying the “mature” construct to himself.

Changes in relationships with significant others are not the only circumstance that causes our constructs to change. Sometimes even very useful constructs that have been used for a long time become less suitable than before for accurately predicting events. Kelly believed that in such cases the comfortable, familiar construct would be modified, at least slightly. This is probably what happens almost all the time with frequently used constructs, because our prediction of events is never perfect. However, the changes that occur in this way do not significantly affect the structural system. It's just a small adjustment to how a person understands events.

Social relationships and personal constructs. If, as Kelly argued in his conclusion about personality, people differ from each other in the way they interpret situations, then it follows that they can be similar to each other if they interpret their experiences in similar ways. Birds of a feather flock together. This idea is clearly expressed in the generality inference: "If a person interprets experience in some way like another person does, then his mental processes are similar to the other person's mental processes. So, if two people share views of the world (i.e. similar in their interpretation of personal experience), they will probably behave similarly (that is, they will have similar personalities). It should be noted that people are similar not because they have experienced the same events in life, and not because their behavior is similar - they are similar because the events have approximately the same psychological meaning for them.Consistent with his cognitive orientation, Kelly relies on interpretation rather than on past experience or observed behavior.

The commonality inference implies that the similarity evident among members of the same culture is not just similarity in behavior. Kelly believed that people of the same culture interpret their experiences in much the same way. The "culture shock" often experienced when a person encounters someone from another culture is the result of differences in the way they interpret events. Support for this view is recent research showing that cultural differences are rooted in differences in the constructs that people use.

Another important aspect of Kelly's personality construct theory concerns the relationship between people and their construct systems. This is reflected in the conclusion about fellowship, which specifies the conditions necessary for effective interpersonal relationships: “One person can play a role in a social process involving another person to the extent that the first analyzes the interpretative processes of the second.” With this conclusion, Kelly emphasized that social interaction consists primarily of one person's attempts to understand how another person understands reality. In other words, in order to interact fruitfully with someone, a person needs to interpret some part of the other person’s constructive system. This statement differs from the assumption that people can interact only when they have a similar construct system or if they are similar in some way. According to Kelly, harmonious social interaction requires that one person psychologically put himself in the place of another in order to better understand and predict his present and subsequent behavior.

In order to “play the role” of your father, for example, you need to understand his views (and yours too) with the help of your constructs and build your actions accordingly. Playing a role in a social process involving another person does not require that person's consent, as evidenced by parent-child and teacher-student relationships. As stated in the commonality inference, it is much easier to understand another person's thinking if your views are similar, but this is not essential for effective role performance. The critical point in interpersonal relationships is that at least one person is trying to understand how the other person views the role he is playing.

Kelly's concept of "role" should not be confused with the term used in sociological role theory. For a sociologist, a role is a unit of social structure to which people belong (for example, an airline employee, the president of an association, a postal worker). And in Kelly's system, a role is defined as “a form of behavior that logically follows from the fact that a person understands how other people associated with him in his activities think.” This definition suggests that meaningful social interaction does not exist unconsciously simply because two or more people communicate with each other or do a common thing. Role acceptance requires that at least one of the interacting individuals is aware of how the other individual interprets phenomena. Kelly further argued that roles do not have to be reciprocal, that is, a person(s) do not need to analyze the role holder in order to be included in social relations. The other person also does not need to enter into a role relationship with the individual analyzing him. Indeed, our society is dominated by one-way role relationships (eg, doctor-patient, lawyer-client, employer-worker). In this regard, Kelly noted that optimal relationships involve mutual understanding of life views, as in the case of a healthy relationship between a wife and husband.

Kelly believed that it was very good to have social predictions that were confirmed by other people. We have certain ideas about what others expect from us. When we act on them and learn that we accurately predicted the expectations of others, it encourages us to continue to behave in the same way.

The conclusion about community formulated by Kelly is very important for the field of human relations. In particular, he proposes a possible, unifying connection between individual and social psychology. The unconditional assertion that stable and sincere human relationships cannot develop unless at least one of the people tries to step into the shoes of the other can explain the communication problems that people have in a variety of situations, ranging from everyday conversations (with parents, relatives, friends, neighbors) and ending with international affairs. A world without war may ultimately depend on the ability of people (especially heads of state) to accurately analyze the interpretative processes of others.

J. Kelly's theory is based on two philosophical ideas: 1) the concept of constructive alternativeism; 2) the concept of the individual’s research position.

The idea of constructive alternativeism is that any thing can be looked at from different angles; There are no absolutely unambiguous things in the world. According to J. Kelly, objective reality exists, but people interpret it differently. Reality is not the same from different points of view. In this sense, there is no true way to interpret human behavior; Human behavior is never completely determined. People remain free to interpret and revise the interpretation of reality. At the same time, the author does not deny the determination of some of a person’s thoughts and feelings by previous events.

The idea of a person’s research position means that, following a subjective interpretation of reality, any person puts forward hypotheses regarding it, with the help of which he tries to predict and control life events. Then the person checks his hypotheses (assumptions), using all available mental processes and mechanisms.

Based on these ideas, J. Kelly suggests that people are focused primarily on future, rather than past or present life events. And all human behavior can be understood as warning in nature. Also, J. Kelly believed that a person’s point of view is changeable; it remains relatively constant in the context of the interpretation of only some things. Another important point in J. Kelly’s approach is his opinion regarding the internal activity of the individual.

J. Kelly's cognitive theory is based on the way in which individuals comprehend and interpret phenomena in their environment. Calling his approach the theory of personal constructs, the author focuses on the psychological processes that allow people to organize and understand the events of their own lives.

Structure. J. Kelly's theory is based on the concept of “personal construct” as a structural unit of personality. According to the author, a person judges himself and the world with the help of conceptual systems, or models, which he himself creates and then tries to adapt to objective reality. Such systems are a tool for systematizing and differentiating the world. J. Kelly defines these conceptual systems, or models, as personal constructs. Personal construct is a concept or thought that a person uses to understand or interpret, explain or predict his experience. Using them, a person comprehends various aspects of reality in terms similarities and contrasts. In this context, personality construct theory attempts to explain how people interpret and predict their life experiences in terms of similarities and differences.

Examples of personality constructs can be “clean - dirty”, “smart - stupid”, “male - female”, “good - evil”, “good - bad” and “young - old”. Each person perceives reality through own constructs necessary to create a consistent picture of the world. If a construct helps accurately predict events, a person is likely to retain it. If the prediction is not confirmed, the construct used will be revised or excluded. Construct validity is tested in terms of its predictive effectiveness, the extent of which may vary.

According to J. Kelly, all personality constructs bipolar and dichotomous by nature. This means that a person notes the similarity of events with each other and at the same time their difference from other events. It is this cognitive process of observing similarities and differences that leads to the formation of personality constructs. All constructs have two opposite poles. That in which two elements are considered similar is called emergent pole, or pole of construct similarity; that in which they are opposite to the third element is called implicit pole, or pole of contrast of the construct. Constructs are products of previous experience. Therefore, diversity in individual construct systems can be explained by differences in past life experiences.

All constructs are characterized by certain formal properties: range of applicability, focus of applicability, permeability - impenetrability of the construct.

Range of applicability includes all events for which the construct is applicable. When a construct is overgeneralized (applied to an inadequately wide range of phenomena), its predictive effectiveness is sharply reduced. Thus, the construct “good - evil” is unlikely to be adequately applicable for prognostic purposes for a range of inanimate phenomena.

Any construct has focus of applicability– these are those phenomena within the range of applicability for which the construct most adequately performs a descriptive-prognostic function. At the same time, the focus of applicability depends on the personal interpretation of the phenomena (for example, “soft - hard” stool and “soft - hard” character).

Permeability-impermeability– another characteristic parameter of the constructs. A permeable construct admits into its range of applicability elements that have not yet been interpreted within its boundaries. He is open to explaining new phenomena. On the other hand, an impenetrable construct, while embracing the phenomena that form its original basis, remains closed to the interpretation of new experience. Permeability refers only to the range of applicability of a construct—a construct is by definition impermeable to any experience outside the range of applicability. Thus, the concept “sociable - unsociable” does not make sense when judging by the weather.

In addition to formal properties, constructs can be described using typology. In J. Kelly's approach, personality constructs can be classified according to the nature of the control they exercise over the elements they describe. There are anticipatory, constellatory and presupposing constructs.

A construct that standardizes elements to be exclusively within its range is called proactive construct. This is a type of classification construct; what is included in one classification is excluded from another. The proactive construct underlies rigid thinking of the “nothing but this” type. So, a strict leader is only a strict leader and nothing else (for example, a sensitive spouse, devoted friend, just father). The systematic use of proactive constructs prevents the implementation of constructive alternativeism, that is, it does not allow one to look at things from different angles and assume their ambiguity.

IN constellatory construct elements may simultaneously belong to other areas, but they are constant in their composition. This type of construct determines template (stereotypical) thinking of the “if... then...” type. So, if a person is young, it means that he is stupid. Constellatory constructs also limit the possibility of alternative opinions emerging; a person or phenomenon is viewed unambiguously through the prism of stereotypical perception, where one characteristic automatically means the presence of a certain other.

A construct that leaves its elements open to alternative constructions is called presuppositional construct. This type of construct is directly opposite to the proactive and constellatory constructs, as it allows a person to be open to new experiences and accept an alternative point of view on the world. It corresponds to flexible thinking. Despite all the correspondence of this type of construct to the idea of constructive alternativeism and the research position of the individual, it cannot always be preferable, since it may contribute to the loss of necessary conceptual guidelines. Personal effectiveness does not depend on the specific predominance of presupposing constructs, but on the ability of the individual, in the process of interpreting and predicting phenomena, to use an adequate type of construct and change these types.

From the point of view of J. Kelly's approach, personality is an organized system of more or less important constructs that are used to interpret the world of experiences and anticipate future events. That is, personality is equivalent to constructs used by an individual for the purpose of predicting the future. To understand another person, you need to know something about the constructs he uses, the events included in those constructs, and how they relate to each other. In addition, personality from the perspective of this approach can be considered as a hierarchically organized system of personal constructs that are in a relatively stable state. This stability and hierarchy are necessary for controllability and better use of the system of personal constructs. The relativity of a stable state is necessary for adequate changes in the system of personal constructs in accordance with the changing reality and experience of the individual. In the context of systematicity, personal constructs can be classified according to a number of criteria. According to the breadth of the range, they distinguish comprehensive and specific constructs. According to the degree of influence on the main human activity, they distinguish core and peripheral constructs. In terms of the degree of predictive flexibility, some constructs are tough, that is, giving an unchanged forecast, while others - free, since they allow making different forecasts under the same type of conditions.

Process and development. From the point of view of J. Kelly, the term “motivation” in its traditional understanding as a motivating external or intrapsychic force of one nature or another does not make sense. In his opinion, people have no other reason for motivation other than life as such, since it is constant movement and change. In this sense, a person is an embodied flow, a process of change at any moment of his existence. Based on this, no special concept (for example, drives, needs, instincts, rewards, motives) is required to explain what causes or motivates human behavior. In addition, from the author’s psychotherapeutic position, research and discussion of human motivation is nothing more than an interpretation of some obscure phenomenon underlying observed behavior. As a personologist and psychotherapist, J. Kelly argues that motivational concepts characterize more the one who expresses them, and not the one whose motives are discussed:

In the context of personal growth and change, the author formulates the so-called basic postulate, which states that personality processes are channels laid out in mental space. Using the volume and direction of these “channels” a person understands reality and predicts future events. In this way it is formed, built life path personality, this is how its behavior is structured. From this point of view, a person is not interested in an emptiness that cannot be predicted; his attention and mental efforts are directed to phenomena that are interesting and predictable. Personal constructs are these channels, these guidelines in life. In each situation, a person chooses which construct is applicable to understand reality, or which channel to move in order to get to where it is necessary.

The main postulate suggests a number of particular conclusions from it. These conclusions reflect the dynamics of the formation and development of a system of personal constructs, which, from the point of view of J. Kelly, is the basis of being with oneself and with the world. Let us consider the conclusions from the main postulate.

1. Conclusion about individuality speaks about the uniqueness of the individual, the subjectivity of perception and interpretation of reality in accordance with the characteristics of personal constructs.

2. Conclusion about the organization: the system of personal constructs is hierarchically organized, the type of organization of constructs differs from person to person.

3. Conclusion about the paramidal structure organization of a system of personal constructs: some of the constructs are either in a subordinate or subordinate position relative to other parts of the system. A subordinate construct includes other constructs, and a subordinate construct is included in a subordinate construct.

4. Conclusion about impermanence hierarchical relationships of constructs: the hierarchical system of personal constructs changes in accordance with its predictive function. If this function suffers, the system undergoes a rebuild.

5. Conclusion about choice shows how a person selects the poles of a construct: a person chooses that pole of the construct that allows one to understand the event more fully, that is, what will be most useful for the predictive effectiveness of the construct system. This process is called "thoughtful choice."

6. Conclusion about specification and expansion indicates the direction of development of the structural system. If confirmation of previous experience in using the construct turns out to be more important and the construct performs the function of a forecast, it is specified and consolidated. Another type of elaboration, extension, involves selecting a construct that is more likely to expand understanding of events. If the prediction is correct, the construct becomes valid and more widely applicable.

7. Conclusion about cyclicality use of constructs. J. Kelly Presents cycle orientation-selection-execution (O-V-I), which consists of sequentially thinking through several possible constructs and choosing the one that turns out to be the best for interpreting the situation. In the orientation phase, a person considers several constructs that can be used to interpret a given situation. The selection phase occurs when a person limits the number of alternative acceptable constructs and decides which ones are most appropriate. The execution phase involves choosing the direction of mental actions and behavior.

8. Conclusion about experience: it is the new experience of contact with unfamiliar phenomena that serves as the basis for changes in the system of personality constructs.

9. Conclusion about learning: confirmation or refutation of hypotheses regarding reality with the help of personal constructs allows a person to replenish and appropriate the experience gained.

10. Conclusion about modulation clarifies that change in a person’s construct system is limited by the permeability of constructs within the range of applicability, that is, the more permeable a person’s subordinating constructs are, the greater the possibility of change within the structures to which they relate.

11. Inference about generality : people are similar in their manifestations, because they look at the world in a similar way, use similar constructs; or have a similar organization of the structural system.

12. Conclusion about the commonwealth concerns the relationships between people and their construct systems. To interact fruitfully with someone, a person needs to interpret some part of the other person's construct system. That is, for harmonious interaction it is necessary for one person to psychologically put himself in the place of another in order to better understand and predict his present and subsequent behavior.

Norm and pathology. One of J. Kelly's key goals was to create a more empirical approach in clinical psychology. He believed that personality construct theory could be useful in the treatment of emotional states, mental health and mental disorders, as well as in therapeutic practice.

Consider in this context four emotional states: anxiety, guilt, threat and hostility.

Anxiety is defined as a person's awareness of the inapplicability of his constructive system to understanding current events. The author argues that the issue is not the defectiveness of the constructive system, but the inaccuracy of personal expectations. In this situation, interpretation and forecast are impossible, which means there is no way to build behavior. From this point of view, the task of psychotherapy is to help the client either acquire new constructs that will allow him to better predict disturbing events, or to make existing constructs more permeable in order to bring new experience into their range of applicability.

Guilt. Certain aspects of a core structural structure are called core roles, are important determinants of our perception of personality. Examples of such core roles are our professional roles, the roles of a parent, a child, a friend. Core roles are very important and their inadequate performance (from one’s own point of view or from the point of view of a significant other) can awaken feelings of guilt, which indicates a violation in the relationship.

Threat is seen as an awareness that the design system may undergo major changes. According to J. Kelly, a threat to a person is psychological violence. Thoughts about one's own death are perhaps the most terrifying type of threat unless they are interpreted as a condition under which life has meaning.

Hostility in J. Kelly's theory, it is an attempt to adhere to an unsuitable construct when faced with contradictory facts. A hostile person, instead of recognizing the inadequacy of his own expectations and the need to revise them, tries to force others to behave in such a way as to satisfy his own opinion of them.

From the point of view of J. Kelly’s theory, mental well-being is determined by four characteristics:

1) the desire to evaluate the predictive effectiveness of their constructs and check the correctness of their interpretations in relation to other people.

2) the ability to abandon one’s constructs and reorient the core role systems in the event of its incapacity; the ability to increase the permeability of constructs;

3) the desire to expand the range, volume and scope of the structural system; remain open to new opportunities for personal growth and development;

4) wide and flexible repertoire of roles; the ability to understand other people in interaction with them, through the ability to take their place.

According to J. Kelly, mental disorder consistent application of the personality construct, despite its ineffectiveness. Mental disorders represent the obvious unsuitability of a system of personal constructs for achieving a goal. They include anxiety and persistent attempts by a person to again feel capable of predicting events. A maladjusted person cannot predict events with great accuracy and therefore fails to understand or cope with the world. Thus, people suffer from psychological problems due to flaws in their construct systems.

In search of conditions conducive to change, J. Kelly developed a specific therapy technique - fixed role therapy.. This technique comes from the fact that psychologically a person is exactly what he imagines himself to be, as well as what he does. Fixed role therapy encourages the client interpret oneself in a new way, behave in a new way and by this become a new person. The purpose of this entire procedure is to stimulate the creative process in relation to oneself and the world. In fixed role therapy, clients are presented with a sketch of a new personality that they are asked to play. Based on the client's preliminary understanding, a description of the new personality is drawn up. The client's job is to behave as if he was that person. Personality sketches made for each client individually involve the development of a new personality. Many of the characteristics presented in the sketch are in stark contrast to actual human behavior.

Fixed role therapy is aimed at restructuring the personality as a whole. It offers the client a new role, a new personality, in relation to which new hypotheses can be tested; it provides the client with the opportunity to explore new ways of interpreting events, while under the protection of an imaginary role. Once the personality sketch has been created, it is presented to the client. The client decides whether he would like to get to know this invented personality better and whether he would feel comfortable enough with such a person. This is to ensure that the new identity does not pose too much of a threat to the client. In the next phase, the therapist invites the client to act as if he were this very person. For a while, the client is asked to forget about who he really is and imagine himself as that person. The client may resist, he may feel that it is a performance, hypocrisy and pretense, but given all these difficulties, he is encouraged to try and see what happens. Over the following weeks, the client lives in the new role. He meets periodically with a therapist to discuss problems that arise in role-playing. During therapy sessions, there may be "rehearsals" of how to bring the new personality sketch to life, so that therapist and client can explore how new system constructs when it is used in reality. The goal of therapeutic change is individual restructuring of oneself. The individual discards some constructs, creates new ones, makes some constructs more rigid, others more flexible, and creates a system of constructs that leads to a more accurate forecast. The therapist encourages the client to imagine, experiment, articulate alternatives, and reinterpret the past in light of new constructs.

At times it seems that people have already studied everything that exists in the world. All the discoveries have been made, nanotechnology has been invented, and there is no longer a single area left, by studying which you can find something new and derive your own theory. But such a research environment still exists - human psychology. It seems that science will be sorting out its features for a very long time, but thanks to scientists like George Kelly, things will move forward.

First years of life

George Alexander Kelly (George Alexander Kelly) is an eminent psychologist who entered the pages of the history of the development of psychology as the creator of the theory of personal constructs. The psychologist was born on April 28, 1905 in Kansas into a family of ordinary farmers. He received his primary education at a local rural school, which had only one classroom. After graduation, George's parents send him to the nearest city, Wichita. George attends high school there.

As for the psychologist’s family, his parents were devout. Dancing was not revered in their house card games. They deeply respected the traditions of the West, except for George, they had no more children.

University years

After graduating from school, George Kelly studies at Friends University, where he spends 3 years. After that, he received another year of education at Park College. There in 1926 he received a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics. After finishing his studies, Kelly thought about starting a job as a mechanical engineer. But due to the influence of discussions that actively took place between universities, I became seriously interested in the social problems of society.

George Kelly recalls how in his first year the subject of psychology seemed very boring to him, the professor paid a lot of attention to theories, but they were not particularly interesting. But becoming interested in social problems, he entered the University of Kansas. There he studies sociology, pedagogy and work relations. In 1928, he wrote a dissertation on the topic “The manner of spending leisure time by representatives of the working class of Kansas,” for which he received a master’s degree.

Pedagogical activity

This did not stop the desire to learn from George Kelly. Immediately after receiving his master's degree, he moved to Scotland, where he conducted research at the University of Edinburgh. There he meets the famous teacher Godfrey Thompson and, under his guidance, writes dissertations on the problems of successful teaching. Thanks to her, he was able to receive a bachelor's degree in teacher education in 1930. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, he goes home to the University of Iowa. There he was presented as one of the applicants for the degree of Doctor of Psychology.

Immediately after returning, he sat down to write a dissertation, in which he studied in detail the factors influencing speech and reading disorders. He defended his doctorate in 1931, and in the same year he married a university teacher, Gladys Thompson.

Career

The American psychologist began his career working as a lecturer in physiological psychology at Fort Hays. After the onset of the Great Depression, Kelly retrained as a professor of clinical psychology, although he was not particularly prepared for this.

George Alexander Kelly's stay at Fort Hays College lasted for 13 years. During this time, the psychologist developed a program of portable clinics. Together with the students, the psychologist traveled around Kansas and provided psychological support to everyone, in particular, the main focus was on helping public schools.

For Kelly, such activities brought a lot of new knowledge. Based on his experience, he began to create a new theoretical basis for another psychological theory.

War and post-war years

The biography of George Kelly preserves memories of the terrible war and post-war years. When did the second one begin? World War, a psychologist began to manage the program of training and psychological support for civilian pilots, and is part of the naval aviation. Later he transferred to the aviation medicine and naval surgery division. There he provided all possible assistance until the end of 1945.

After the war, there is a high need for psychological support in the country: soldiers who returned home from the front had many problems with their mental state. At this time, the development of clinical psychology reached a new level, and George Kelly brought a lot of new things to it. 1946 was a significant year for the psychologist; he was recognized as a state-level psychologist and given a position as head of the department of therapeutic psychiatry and psychology at Ohio University. Kelly spent almost 20 years in this honorable position.

During this time, he managed to create his own personality psychology. Created a psychological support program for the best graduates of US universities. In 1965, the professor’s long-time dream came true; he was invited to the Department of Sciences of Behavior and Morals at Brandeis University. Along with his dream come true, he gains freedom for his research and until the end of his life he continues to write a book consisting of numerous reports on psychology. The main attention was paid to the possibility of using the main components of the psychology of personal constructs to resolve international conflicts. George Kelly ended his glorious journey on March 6, 1967.

Bibliography

During his life, George Kelly not only became known as an outstanding psychologist who held leadership positions, but was also known as a researcher and writer. Thus, in 1955, a two-volume work entitled “Psychology of Individual Constructs” was published, which describes theoretical interpretations of the concept of “personality” and interprets variations in causal changes in personal constructs.

The year 1977 was marked by the publication of the work “New Trends in the Concept of Personal Constructs.” In 1989, students of the psychology department had the opportunity to read Kelly’s next book, “The Psychology of Constructs.” In 1985, it appeared on the shelves new job- “Development of the psychology of constructs.” All these books were published after the death of the scientist. He worked on them throughout his life, devoting every free minute to research. All his ideas and research were detailed in personal notes. Therefore, it was possible to systematize the professor’s work and publish several more books.

Features of work

George Kelly can be considered the founder of cognitive therapy. When working with patients, he, like many other psychologists of the time, used psychoanalytic interpretations and was amazed at the extent to which his patients accepted Freudian teachings. This was the beginning of an experiment: Kelly began to use interpretations from a variety of psychological schools and directions in his work.

This made it clear that neither the study of childhood fears nor the delving into the past that Freud recommended was fundamental. Psychoanalysis was effective only because it gave patients the opportunity to think differently. Simply put, Kelly discovered that therapy would only be successful if the client could re-interpret his experiences and aspirations. This also applies to the causes of disorders. For example, if a person is confident that the words of someone who is higher in status are a priori correct, then he will be upset if he hears criticism addressed to him.

Kelly helped his students understand their own attitudes and test them in practice. He was one of the first practicing psychologists to try to change the patient's way of thinking. Today this practice is considered basic to many therapeutic methods.

Psychology of Personality

Following his convictions, George Kelly was confident that it was possible to find a theory that would suit each patient, and most importantly, would quickly recognize his world system. This is how the concept of personal constructs emerged. Within the boundaries of this direction, each person is a researcher who considers the world through personal categories, constructs characteristic only of an individual.

Kelly said that a person is not subject to his instincts, stimuli and reactions. Each individual is capable of exploring the world in his own way, assigning meanings and constructs to the environment and acting within their framework. The psychologist defined the constructs as bipolar scales. For example, “sociable-closed”, “smart-stupid”, “rich-poor”. Due to the fact that an individual views objects through these characteristics, it is possible to predict his behavior. Based on these developments, George Kelly created a special Repertoire Test of Role Constructs, in short, the Rep Test.

Rep test

George Kelly once said: “In order to help a person, you need to know how he sees the world.” That's why the Repertory Test was created. It is considered a good diagnostic technique and, perhaps, more closely than another psychological test associated with personality theory.

The rep test consists of sequentially executing two processes:

Based on the proposed list of roles, the patient must make a list of persons who correspond to these roles.
The second process is the formation of constructs. To do this, the psychologist points to three written faces and asks the patient to describe exactly how two of them differ from the third. For example, if a list of a friend, father and mother is selected, then the patient may say that the father and friend are similar in their sociability, and the mother, on the contrary, is a rather reserved person. This is how the “shy-outgoing” construct appears.

In general, the test usually offers 25-30 roles that are considered significant for everyone. In the same way, from 25 to 30 triads are identified, and after each triad a new construct is generated in the patient. Constructs tend to repeat themselves, but in each test there are approximately 7 main areas.

Features and Application

George Kelly and personality construct theory revolutionized psychiatry. Thanks to the repertoire test, the subject can not only freely express his thoughts, but:

Provides the most representative figures.
The constructs obtained as a result of such research are indeed the prism through which a person understands the world.
The constructs used by the subject give the psychologist a clear idea of how the patient sees his past and future.

In addition, the Rep Test is one of the few developments in psychology that can be used in any field. Just by selecting the right roles, you can get countless constructs. So, in 1982, a Rep test was done to determine the constructs used by perfume buyers. Subsequently, the resulting constructs were used by advertising agencies. The advertising created thanks to this material had high level conversions.

George Kelly studied human psychology all his life and achieved considerable success. And even today, the results of his research are used in various spheres of life.