Drawing the Ideal Self (Personal Construct Psychology - PCP)

Although this month’s podcast is about sports coaching, the ideas are suited to many other coaching encounters. I refer to a diagram which you will be able to see via the link on the podcast description on my website (see below).

The Expectation Effect by David Robson BBC R4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00199wp

Richard J Butler (1996). Sport Psychology in Action

Nadal’s pre-serve ritual video clip https://olympics.com/en/video/nadal-s-pre-serve-ritual

Butler (1996) Enhancing confidence in others diagram on the podcast page of my website - look for Ep.26

https://drawingtheidealself.co.uk/https-drawingtheidealself.com-podcast

This month the podcast is about constructs. If you are new to PCP, I hope this might summarise what a construct is, the difference between constructs and elements, and verbal, non-verbal and pre-verbal constructs.

References

A drawing and its opposite: an application of the notion of the ‘construct’ in the elicitation of children’s drawings. Chapter 9 in

Ravenette, T. (1999). Personal Construct Theory in Educational Psychology. A Practitioner’s View. 

Dalton, P. & Dunnett. G. (1990). A Psychology for Living. Personal Construct Theory for Professionals and Clients.

Fransella, F. & Dalton, P. (1990). Personal Construct Counselling in Action.

This month’s episode is about slot ratting or slot movement. Have you wondered why you haven’t been able to keep up with a desired change in yourself? Have you tried to help someone who wants to make changes, knows what to do/how to be in their new self, and yet they cannot sustain them. Slot rattling is a really useful concept that can help us to understand one reason this might happen.

April’s episode is about holidays, from a PCP perspective. I thought it might be interesting to have a think about this is case you want a little light PCP thinking to consider whilst you are away. If you haven’t decided on a holiday yet, you might find it useful to think about some of this before you make your arrangements. I reference an interesting paper by Beverley Walker: Travelling: “We don’t call it travelling; we call it living.” If you do try to order the book this paper is in, take care to get the right one for your own language - it is also in German.

Reference

Walker, B. (2003). Travelling: “We don’t call it travelling; we call it living.” in Scheer, Jorn. W. (Ed.) Crossing Borders - Going Places. Personal Constructions of Otherness. ISBN: 9783898062961

This episode is an answer to a question I hear often, "How can I use PCP approach in work with children and young people?" I thought I would talk about my own approach but please remember that other practitioners will have a completely different and equally successful approach. This is one of the great benefits of PCP - there is no prescribed way, so it is about gradually working out your own way of doing things.  This means that the approach is accessible to all professionals working with children and young people. Although I am a psychologist, I hope this explanation could be useful to people of all those professions. 

Ian is a PCP psychotherapist and a social worker who has been using a PCP approach throughout his career. He talks about his journey to date and how he uses PCP in his daily work.

Ian’s contact details are Ian Gillman-Smith, Independent Social Work Consultant, UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Registered Social Worker

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.iangillmansmith.co.uk

References

Peggy Dalton & Gavin Dunnett (2005) A Psychology for Living ISBN 0-471-93549-2

Miller Mair (2014) Another Way of Knowing: The Poetry of Psychological Inquiry.

Winter & Reed (Eds.) (2014) Towards a Radical Redefinition of Psychology: The selected works of Miller Mair (World Library of Mental Health).

Fay Fransella (2021) Inquiring Man: The Psychology of Personal Constructs. (3rd Edition)

This month I re-read Tom Ravenette’s paper, Who are you? A structure for exploring a ‘sense of self’ (1989) and was reminded how creative Tom was and how good he was at designing PCP techniques. This is a paper which describes his exploration process, something he developed from what he learned from his practice. So, that is the topic for today’s episode. A copy of the technique can be found at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5rbrx4tkg1utsf4/Who%20are%20you%20instructions%20Ravenette%201989.pdf?dl=0

If you would like to get Tom Ravenette’s book, you can find out more here: Personal Construct Theory in Educational Psychology.

This episode is an interview with Jenny Newland. Jenny is a psychotherapist but she is also a maths tutor and coaches kayaking - a rare combination I expect! We talk about how she came to PCP and how she uses a PCP approach in her three different roles. If you would like to explore more or get in touch with Jenny, her details are below.

Jenny’s contact information:

For therapy and getting in touch www.pcp-livingandlearning.co.uk

For kayaking www.backtotheriver.co.uk

For maths https://mathswithjenny.wordpress.com

Her maths animations are on You Tube:

Dancing Triangles: https://youtu.be/8Ot4elhCAes

Angles and Polygons: https://youtu.be/DqgMgqwLQQQ

It is coming up to the new year and you might be thinking of making some changes in your life - maybe starting something, or stopping something. I thought it could be useful to think about Kelly’s version of aggressiveness which has a different meaning from the dictionary definition. Exploring the implication of changes before making them will help you to anticipate their potential impact - your own and other people’s construing may not be similar. I have tried to find a useful reference about implications grids but there is nothing easily found online to go with the chapter references below.

I think you could do a really simple implications exploration by noting the implications of the change for the people below. Remember the last podcast about roles and think about construe your change or development and how they might respond to you.

If you could like a reminder of Kelly’s definition of anxiety, listen to the September 2021 edition.

Implications grid http://pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/imp-grid.html

The Great British Sewing Bee BBC TV  - just in case you have never seen it

Implications grid http://pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/imp-grid.html

We all have roles to play, some more comfortably than others. This new technique is a variation on Drawing the Ideal Self for use with adults, children and young people. It explores a role (e.g. sister, parent, athlete, teacher, reader) and can be used to find ways to move forward in the role or to set personal targets. It may be useful to professionals to explore with people they try to help but it can also be used by an individual in their personal development.