Drawing the Ideal Self (Personal Construct Psychology - PCP)

Kelly’s theory is all about the anticipation of experiences and how we make sense of experiences in the light of our personal construing. A PCP formulation will focus on what is seems to be going on in the person’s construing system. Kelly has six important questions for the therapist to help them to formulate and then uses particular terms to describe what seems to be happening - a reference to the construing system and its constructs. Remember that more than one thing can be going on at a time, and that we would always check out a formulation with the client because we might be missing something. Also note that Kelly does not separate the assessment and intervention because the assessment will always be live - people are likely to offer more relevant information about their construing as they develop a relationship with the therapist. Construing will develop and new constructs and connections will emerge over time, sometimes leading to them being able to explain their experiences and the impact on their construing for the first time.

Reference:

Kelly, G.A. (1955 and reprinted 1991) The Psychology of Personal Constructs.

This episode introduces the DiS podcast navigator booklet which you can get the link below (it is free). The aim is to help you to find past episodes more easily by sorting them by their topic. The booklet has hyperlinks directly to the podcast episodes on You Tube.

The link is: https://BookHip.com/NCWLAVV

This month the episode is about laddering, which came as a request from a listener. A great request because it is an extremely powerful technique so should be used with great care and full attention being paid to the person you are working with. Laddering can very quickly get to aspects of a person’s construing they may not have expressed in words, so the experience can be surprising to them - for good or bad reasons. Learning to use laddering is very important for PCP practitioners because it is a way to explore how the person’s choices in their daily life are connected to their core constructs.

This episode looks at two papers on laddering, one by Fransella and one by Walker and Crittenden. Laddering is something that looks and sounds very easy but it requires theoretical understanding to use it well. Kelly proposed that a person has many, many constructs and that they are organised in a hierarchical system. Some constructs will be extremely important to the person - their core constructs. Having an awareness of a person’s core constructs will be very important if we want to understand them better. The authors here describe laddering and pick up some of the common questions about process.

Fransella, F. (2003). Some Skills and Tools for Personal Construct Practitioners. Ch. 10 in Fransella, F. (Ed). International Handbook of Personal Construct Psychology.

Walker, B., and Crittenden, N. (2012). The use of Laddering: Techniques, Applications and Problems. Ch. 3 in Caputi, P., Viney, L.L., Walker, B., and Crittenden, N. Personal Construct Methodology.

Today is not a usual episode but an invitation to tell me know whether you find the podcast useful and what you’d like to hear about in future.

If we want to be able to help people, we will need to understand their personal construing of the problem. Exploring this with them- finding out about their constructs - will enable us to begin this process. This episode includes a typical referral for an anxious child, with three very different possible constructions of the problem. This is a reminder that construing is personal and individual, and is related to what we make of our experiences.

The PCP Pocketbook can be found here: https://amzn.eu/d/7AO5chv

n this episode we will think about Kelly’s definition of hostility applied to an aspect of the recent race riots in the UK. On the whole, as we have experiences, we make adjustments to construing, based on fresh evidence. However, there will be times when, despite all the evidence, we hang on to our current construing. Kelly’s professional or transitional constructs offer potential explanations for where our construing is ‘stuck’. Hostility is one of them. As always, Kelly pays particular attention to the fact that changes in our most important (core) constructs will be a major challenge for us because the implications will be far-reaching.

This episode is a paper by Dr. Dina Pekkala, a clinical psychologist. She describes some of her work with adults referred for anger, reminding us that anger is a symptom of deeper troubles and how important it is not to deal with as an inappropriate behaviour. Dina worked with many angry adults and worked with Peter Cummins (see Ep. 40, Sept. 2023) so she had a great model for her PCP therapy.

Reference:  

Dina Pekkala (2009). The icing on the sausage: The emancipation of constructive alternativism.  In Butler (Ed.) Reflections in Personal Construct Theory. 

Have you considered what lies ahead when you retired from working? Whatever you do now, one day that will happen, so it is better to be prepared for it. This month’s episode is a new technique, Drawing the Ideal Retired Person. This is an exploration of the future, aiming to promote a smoother adjustment to that phase of your life. There will also be a step-by-step video on You Tube so you can see the technique in parts, hopefully making it easier to follow.

https://youtu.be/0z8htw-sO_Q?si=_ASdbxyXJXjC8g3e 

This month’s episode is a reading of Dr Kev Harding’s paper Clinical psychology practice without using psychiatric labels: an alternative approach using Personal Construct Psychology is an interesting read. It invites us to consider PCP as a useful alternative framework from which to practice so that we have a “therapeutic relationship of two equal human beings on a journey to understand the origins of one person’s distress (albeit with one being paid for the encounter)”. The paper is available on the internet. 

Reference

Harding, K. (2011). Clinical psychology practice without using psychiatric labels: an alternative approach using Personal Construct Psychology The Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, Summer 2011, pp.86-91

http://www.psychiatry.freeuk.com/Harding.pdf

This episode introduces a new technique to explore the impact of physical health problems through the exploration of personal construing. Concerns about our bodies can be persistent and may be very distressing so understanding what lies behind the distress is important if we want to help someone. The steps of the process are described here but there is also a more detailed video example on my You Tube channel.