Abstract
The core consideration with which George Kelly is concerned is distilled in his suggestion that the psychology of personal constructs represents an attempt to catch a glimpse of the person going about the business of being human. Whatever the business of being human is for Kelly, he is clear that he wishes to understand that business from the perspective of those who are going about it. To use Kelly’s words, he wants to take the perspective of the “inward outlook” and in so doing move away from the “outward inlook,” providing a radical rethink of the psychology that was contemporary of his time. This article will suggest that the unsophisticated way that Kelly dealt with language has implications for the theoretical carriage of this “inner outlook” and opens up Personal Construct Psychology to elaboration in the direction of a more sophisticated account of language. This article will culminate in a suggestion that Personal Construct Psychology make a more tight hermeneutic turn to Hermeneutic Constructivism.
George Kelly: A primer
As we approach the 50th anniversary of George Kelly’s death it provides an occasion for a review of his influence on psychology both during his lifetime and following his death. Following some 30 years’ experience in psychology, Kelly published the culmination of his clinical and theoretical engagement: a two-volume work titled The Psychology of Personal Constructs (1955). While it is arguably the idiographic emphasis of his work that has impacted upon Kelly’s ideas becoming part of mainstream psychology, it is these same ideas that are the foundation of what was—and still is (Winter, 2012)—considered a radical rethinking of what psychology is essentially about. At the heart of this rethink is a thoroughgoing theoretical conceptualisation of the psychologically proactive individual. This is stated as a fundamental postulate that is refined and amplified by 11 corollaries. The fundamental postulate holds that “a person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the way in which he [or she] anticipates events” (Kelly, 1955, p. 46). Representing a novel departure from the language and ideas of reductionist and mechanistic psychology of his time, this statement emphasises that the individual does not merely react in terms of past experiences, but rather evaluates events on the basis of anticipatory predictions about the future.
The model of the person at the centre of Kelly’s work is an active meaning-giving creator of understanding. The meaning given to events or situations is individual and is organised into an integral system that consists of either more or less complex relationships. These meaning units or constructs may be core and therefore resistant to change or peripheral constructs which are amenable to change. In light of the idiosyncratic nature of these anticipatory meaning units, and in relation to experience, an individual would be considered to have a more or less personal interpretation of an event or situation. It follows that for Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) it is not what goes on around an individual that makes him or her experienced; it is what an individual has made of an event through the successive projection and adaptation of an anticipation or construct as an event happens.
The psychological proactivity afforded each of us through his theoretical position situates Kelly as an early pioneer and arguably a founding figure of psychological constructivism. The many and varied epistemological and cognitive constructivisms, despite the different theoretical groundwork, all have in common a rejection of the possibility of passivity of mind and the subsequent naïve correspondence theory of truth. The core of constructivist thought suggests that each person is the constitutor of an active and constructive capacity for knowledge of one’s self and the world. While the fundamental postulate and supporting corollaries espoused by Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) are no longer explicit within many contemporary and varied constructivist approaches, the theoretical principles that inform modern psychological constructivism more broadly are decidedly consistent with those first proposed by Kelly (1955). So much so, his approach is now considered to be comfortably situated within the more contemporary developments that have come to be described as constructivist (Raskin, 2002).
The relative disappearance of Kelly’s central postulate and corollaries from mainstream contemporary psychology coupled with the somewhat critical tone adopted by this article toward aspects of Kelly’s work may seem at odds with the effort to produce a paper on PCP at all, but tucked in the pages of Kelly’s (1955) work is something extraordinary even by today’s psychology. Chiari and Nuzzo (1996) describe Kelly’s (1955) work as “so much ahead of its time that [it] is only now at the cutting edge of contemporary psychology and psychotherapy” (p. 42). What PCP gives is a thoroughgoing account of psychological human being; an approach that Warren (1998) aptly suggests “encapsulates the various aspects that psychologists and philosophers have tried to isolate: cognition, affect, volition” (p. 6). It offers a disciplined psychology of the “inner outlook” of the individual person an alternative to the scientific and diagnostic language that dominates pathologised psychologies of the “outer inlook” that are commonly seen today.
This article represents the beginning point for a series of short term and longer-term aspirations for the rehabilitation of Kelly’s central ideas. The long-term aspiration for this body of work is an attempt to begin to address the issues that have been central to PCP’s mainstream rejection and provide an entrée to a dialogue aimed at rehabilitating and re-envisioning Kelly’s core humanistic and reflexive principles into the contemporary psychological discourse. As the first step towards this and in the shorter term, this paper takes a critical lens upon the way in which Kelly dealt poorly with the topic of language and its role in the construction of one’s Self and the world. His unsophisticated account of language will be shown here to have implications for the sustainability of arguably his most central idiographic ideal of capturing a glimpse of the individual going about the business of being human from the perspective of his or her inner outlook. The culmination of this discussion is a call for any re-envisioning of Kelly’s central theoretical principles to begin from a thoroughgoing philosophical foundation of the role of language in the business of being human.
The “inner outlook”: More inner than outer
Kelly’s “outward inlook” represents the perspective of an observer casting a gaze upon another person in order to develop as much understanding of that other person’s psychological functioning. Dissatisfied with this directionality of understanding Kelly (1963) sought to develop a psychology that offered an opportunity to understand the individual person at the level of what he described as the “inner outlook” as “an unabashed alternative to the scientistic psychologies of the outer inlook” (p. 183). For Kelly, the “inner outlook” represents a more humanistic alternative that does not deprive humans of their capacity to make decisions and be in charge of their own lives (Fransella & Neimeyer, 2003; Holland, Neimeyer, Currier, & Berman, 2007). In so doing, Kelly (1955) offered a rethink of many central assumptions that informed the psychological approaches that were contemporary to his time and was able to, “give life back to the person who lives it” (p. 37).
Kelly (1955) suggests that any psychological theory is in need of being somewhat reflexive. That is, it must account equally for the person who wrote the theory as for the people of whom it attempts to provide an account. The following statement from Kelly (1955) is clear as to his intentions with regard to theoretical reflexivity:
If a theory is to account for the way in which a man turns, it should also account for the way its author turned when he wrote it. This is what we were thinking of when … we proposed that we be consistent about what we conceived to be mankind’s goal and what we conceived to be scientists’ goals. (p. 39)
To present Kelly’s (1955) sentiment in another way, a theoretical position concerned with catching a glimpse of the person going about the business of being human, must be reflective of that business more generally if it is to be considered a theoretically reflexive position. PCP must reasonably account for the way that each of us comes to experience and understand the world in inherently unique ways (as our inner) and then share that understanding (as an outlook) with other individuals who are actively doing the same thing. Arguably this is precisely what Kelly meant by his notion of an “inner outlook.” However, a close reading of The Psychology of Personal Constructs (1955) would indicate that the theoretical tenability of the “inner outlook” is difficult to sustain on the basis that Kelly dealt inadequately with the notion of language. In order to get to a deeper appreciation of these theoretical implications it is important to rehabilitate Kelly’s notion of the construct—arguably Kelly’s most primordial ontological structure—and its subsequent role in the business of being human.
The construct
The most central theoretical tenet of Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) is embodied by Kelly’s (1955) idea of Constructive Alternativism. This position holds that “all of our present interpretations of the universe are subject to revision or replacement” (p. 15). As a foundation to this notion Kelly (1955) asks that we afford each individual person “scientist-like” characteristics. That is, we assume that each individual goes about the business of being human “as if” he or she is a scientist developing theories, creating hypotheses, and pursuing experimental and other evidence in order to develop further his or her overall understanding for future use. The application of the scientist metaphor ultimately culminates in a question posed by Kelly (1955): “might not the differences between the personal viewpoints of different men correspond to the differences between the theoretical points of view of different scientists?” (p. 5).
These theoretical points of view are thus what Kelly describes as constructs. The following passage from Kelly (1955) provides a useful introductory description of his notion of the construct for further contemplation:
Man looks at the world through transparent patterns or templates which he creates and then attempts to fit over the realities of which the world is composed. The fit is not always very good. Yet without such patterns the world appears to be such an undifferentiated homogeneity that man is unable to make any sense out of it. Even a poor fit is more helpful to him than nothing at all. Let us give the name constructs to these patterns that are tentatively tried on for size. (pp. 8–9)
This description clearly locates the ontological significance of the construct for Kelly, as the most primary structure for going about the business of being human. The centrality of the construct is underscored further by a brief consideration of the Fundamental Postulate that represents an interim statement through which the carriage of the theoretical tenets of his Constructive Alternativism approach can be achieved.
Kelly’s (1955) Fundamental Postulate states, “A person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the way in which he anticipates events” (p. 46). He is clear that his concern is with the psychological consideration of the person’s processes and that these processes are “channelized” by networks of pathways provided by that person’s construct(s) and subsequently his or her possibly wider and more elaborated construct system. Our constructs provide the “grooves” through which these processes operate that are established prior to an event with the world and therefore are anticipatory in nature. The anticipations or constructs that a person develops through a movement of psychological abstraction are laid upon the world and assessed with regard to their predictive efficiency or their degree of “fit” with the reality of the world itself. Here the central influence of Pragmatism for PCP is evident. That “reality” is the Pragmatist’s view of a set of constraints on all that we do, and Dewey’s ideas as instruments with which we operate on and in the world is reminiscent here.
Although Kelly’s novel idea of the construct provides a means of establishing the psychologically proactive nature of the person that he conceives of, the following discussion will suggest that locating the construct beyond the reach of language as Kelly does, makes this fundamental postulate a theoretically difficult position to support. That is, in the absence of the medium of language—a medium that is arguably fundamental in order for each of us to engage in the movement or dialogue of abstraction—it is counter intuitive to apprehend that we could recognise the degree to which our constructs do indeed anticipate the actuality of the world.
This critique of the implications of Kelly’s (1955) less than sophisticated account of language is not isolated to the Fundamental Postulate of PCP. In fact, each of the 11 elaborative corollaries that either require the person to engage in a process: of abstraction (Construct Corollary, Organization Corollary, Dichotomy Corollary, Experience Corollary, Modulation Corollary), to bring into the open our constructs for comparisons or coalescence with those of another individual (Individuality Corollary, Commonality Corollary, Sociality Corollary), to choose one pole of a construct from another (Choice Corollary, Range Corollary), or to envisage the world from a different construct (Fragmentation Corollary), are open to question and subsequent elaboration. The cornerstone of this critique is a suggestion that Kelly subscribes to a naïve assumption about language and meaning.
Further, recognition of the shortcomings in Kelly’s account of language generally has been made by others. Chiari and Nuzzo (2004), for example, say this explicitly: “Kelly does not appear to have adequately dealt with the topic of language” (p. 57). Indeed, evidence of Kelly’s inadequate assumptions about language can be seen clearly in his own words and provides a preface for the discussion to follow. Here Kelly (1958) emphasises the separation between the construct and language, a separation that raises questions about the overall theoretical sustainability of his position: “The personal construct we talk about bears no relation to grammatical structure, syntax, words, language, or even communication … it is simply a psychologically constructed unit for understanding human processes” (p. 87). A deeper consideration of language is important here and Taylor (1985) provides a useful framework for beginning a discussion about the nature of language and subsequently provides a foundation for a deeper consideration of Kelly’s (1955) naïve account of language.
An account of language
A naïve approach to language assumes that language is merely a straightforward or unambiguous tool that functions to represent things in the world. Such an account overlooks the fundamental capacity of language to disclose the world, and, epitomises what Taylor describes as a designative account of language. Taylor’s (1985) primary concern is with theories of meaning and by extension theories about the fundamental nature of language. As a function of this he offered two accounts of language: the “expressive” and the “designative.” These provide a useful means of unpacking further the nature of language and an entrée to a consideration of the naïve and dubious links between language and the construct.
Expressive account of language
Although it is the designative account that this discussion is most concerned with clarifying here, a consideration of expressive accounts provides a valuable touchstone for emphasising those aspects of language overlooked by designative accounts and therefore by Kelly (1955). For Taylor (1985), expressive accounts maintain “some of the mystery surrounding language” (p. 221) and account for language as constitutive of thought and subsequently as disclosive of the world. Expressive accounts maintain that meaning cannot be separated from the language that conditions it, because meaning is only manifest in it. Thus, epitomising the expressivist account, this notion recognises that although it is a public language that we share, the carriage of meaning in language cannot be known outside of the expression of this meaning in dialogue. This is emphasised by Taylor (1985) in the following passage:
The meaning of an expression cannot be explained by its being related to something else, but only by another expression. Consequently, the method of isolating terms and tracing correlations cannot work for expressive meaning … expression is the power of a subject; and expressions manifest things, and hence essentially refer us to subjects for whom these things can be manifest. And as I said above, what expression manifests can only be made manifest in expression, so that expressive meaning cannot be accounted for independently of expression. (p. 221)
Expressive accounts therefore depict language as being more than simply what is said, it is in Taylor’s (1985) words, “always more than we can encompass; it is in a sense inexhaustible” (p. 231). In gathering all of this together Taylor (1985) captures the core tenets of the expressive account of language as follows:
The expressive conception gives a view of language as a range of activities in which we express/realize a certain way of being in the world. … it is not just the reflective awareness by which we recognize things as —, and describe our surroundings; but also that by which we come to have the properly human emotions, and constitute our human relations … it is more like a medium in which we are plunged, and which we cannot fully plumb. (pp. 234–235)
In order to illuminate more adequately the nature of an expressive account of language, a consideration of what it is not is valuable. For this reason a return to a discussion of Taylor’s (1985) designative account of language is worthwhile.
The designative account of language
At the core of a designative account is a naïve assumption that language as utterance, and as inscription, makes sense, because at some level they represent and stand for something in the world, or re-present something to the mind (Lawn, 2004). To say that language represents something here is to suggest that it points to or designates something. Here words are simply ciphers or signs for things and those words are meaningful as a function of their association with the thing for which they stand proxy. This unambiguous account of language means that words “stand for” or “signify” the things they represent.
Scientific thought strives to offer an account of the universe that is independent of subject related properties. It is this promise of freedom from a subject-related account of language that propels designative accounts of language. So much so, that to use the words of Taylor (1985), a designative account of language “must be perfectly transparent; it cannot itself be the locus of mystery, that is, of anything which might be irreducible to objectivity. The meaning of words can only consist in the ideas (or things) they designate” (p. 226). Thus, here words attach to the thing they designate. Therefore for designative theorists, each of us is able to capture phenomena by appealing to the way that words mean what they designate and can therefore provide an accurate representation of the way things are.
One of the central issues that divide expressive and designative accounts of language is the role of language in thought. One of the principal concerns of British empiricist thinking, found in the work of Hobbes and Locke, was to establish a picture of the empirical world that was grounded in the foundation offered by a clear unequivocal definition of words (Taylor, 1985). In order to achieve this, language needed to be demystified showing it to be merely an instrument of thought. For Taylor (1985) “one of the stronger motives for making it so basic was the desire to overcome projection, and what we later call ‘anthropomorphism’, that promiscuous mixing of our own intuitions of meaning, relevance, importance with objective reality” (p. 249). Thus, for language to be an instrument capable of building a representation of the universe it must be clear what aspects of the world words attach to, what they connect with or designate, and this connection must be completely within our control.
In exploring this link between thought and language further, if language is simply an instrument of thought, that is, it signifies or designates it, then it is palpable that thought must be something other than language and occur prior to language itself. On this Lawn (2004) poses the following question, “if language is merely a mnemonic aid to thinking (language somehow makes complex thought more manageable according to Hobbes), what then is thought?” (p. 8). Designative accounts would have us believe that thought is wordless until converted into sound and then into meaning that is accessible to the mind. In response, Lawn (2004) seeks to undermine the tenability of the designative position:
Why, contra this view, is it the case that cognitive development goes hand in hand with development of linguistic ability? Surely a child only acquires sophistication in its thinking as it becomes more adept in the use of language? The belief that ideas and thoughts precede language (logically and chronologically) is surely untenable. (p. 8)
An adherence to a designative account of language, despite the untenable nature of the position, clearly signifies a focus that is less about the nature of language, but as a way into a scientific study of the individual person’s inner mental life. So much is this the case that Lawn (2004) suggests that in designative accounts of language “questions about the actuality of language are quickly overshadowed or forgotten. The diverse and extensive nature of language is overlooked and a limited concentration upon the dubious belief that language discloses states of mind neglects the phenomena of language” (p. 9). It is this neglect of language’s extensive and expressive nature and the subsequent subscription to a naïve or designative account of language that permeates Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) and ultimately underpins the challenge being levelled here.
Kelly’s naïve view of language
Returning to the notion of reflexivity considered earlier, in order for PCP to be considered reflexive, it is important that each of us is able to see ourselves as represented by way of Kelly’s theoretical take on being human. In other words, PCP must embody the way in which each of us is indeed able to bring to language our “inner outlook” for another person, because this is in fact what we do as human beings. If we go on “as if” the expressive account of language is entirely appropriate, and we follow the description proposed by arguably the most cogent expressivist account set down by Gadamer (1960/2003), then “being that can be understood is language” (p. 474). In other words, that which cannot come to language cannot be understood. In this view there is no separation between a person’s understanding processes and language. It follows therefore that the person envisaged here is able to be articulate about the qualities of his or her innermost experiences. The coming into language of these qualities of experience, or qualia, is not a special kind of understanding. Instead this coming into language is the very condition of qualia itself. Worded another way, we can be expressive about our innermost feelings, because the way they come to language in understanding is the very same language that these feelings can be shared with another person. However, this is not the account of language and meaning that is found in Kelly’s (1955) work. Instead, what we see is an adherence to a designative account of language, or something very much like one, which challenges the reflexive nature of PCP and opens it up to elaboration in the direction of taking greater account of language.
At stake here is the way in which PCP bypasses language, assuming it can go directly to a person’s mental processes, his or her constructs, or to thought itself. In so doing, Kelly’s (1955) position assumes an entirely unproblematic and direct connection between person and world, devoid of any consideration of the unavoidable intermediary role of language in the business of being human that he seeks to understand. Suggesting that Kelly side-step or “duck” (Leman, 1970) language is to suggest that for him the mental processes of thought and language are not one and the same. Instead, the person Kelly envisages is able to have a thought, reflect upon that thought, and then unproblematically bring that thought to language after it has occurred. The following passage from Mair (2000) problematises the tenability of such naïve or designative accounts of language and provides an entrée to a deeper consideration of the naïve view of language propounded by and indeed necessitated by Kelly (1955):
At present, we seem mostly to assume that language is virtually transparent, and that we can see through our words and sentences to the things in the world that we are focusing our attention on. … This whole view is wrong and must be abandoned. No longer is it assumed that words and sentences gain their meaning from some direct reflecting of things in the world, but rather from the internal relationships within the language system itself. The relationship of language to reality has become much more questionable. In addition, language has to be regarded as “substantial,” rather than “transparent” … words and structures in language shape us more than we shape them. (Mair, 2000, p. 342)
Although Mair (2000) is not forthcoming about the way in which he foresees language’s substantiation, he recognises that such substantiation requires a considered theoretical unpacking of the relationship between language and reality. It is the substantiation of the relationship between language and reality and more specifically between language and the construct that are emphasised as lacking in PCP.
Essential but incoherent link between construct and language
Kelly, in a characteristically pragmatic conceptualisation, accounts for language as merely a tool (1955, pp. 138, 354; 1962, pp. 4, 11, 14) or instrument (1964, p. 148) that can be used to elaborate and transmit meaning. Kelly (1964) presented a paper titled “The Language of Hypothesis: Man’s Psychological Instrument,” which makes clear this instrumental understanding of language:
Even after continued experience in psychotherapy, most of us still hold doggedly to the belief that one man’s understanding of the universe can be somehow encoded with a signal system and then transmitted intact to another man via the sense. The signal system is often called “language.” … a device he uses to represent his circumstances. (pp. 147, 148)
Here the instrumental nature of language as a series of signals for re-presenting our understanding—as opposed to being seen as the condition of understanding itself—clearly demonstrates what is for Kelly a separation of our mental processes from language. That is, a separation between our construct(s) and language. This passage clearly overlooks the inherent indeterminacy of language as a medium, and instead firmly situates Kelly’s work within the domain of designative accounts of language.
Nevertheless Kelly’s theoretical wiliness makes him difficult to typecast. For instance, several of his clinical tools—the Self Characterization and the Repertory Grid Technique—suggest that one person is able to illuminate the constructs of another person. Both of these tools have their basis in the dialogical use of language and therefore the coming into language of the construct. And yet, to return to the essence of the argument here, Kelly is adamant that the construct is beyond the reach of language. With this disparity in mind a turn is now made toward Kelly’s (1955) work in order to emphasise the degree to which he is adamant about this view.
The construct that is beyond the reach of language
Arguably two of the most respected scholars within the discipline of PCP, Chiari and Nuzzo, are responsible for a sustained and considered call for PCP to take a hermeneutic turn. Arguing for a hermeneutic constructivism, Chiari and Nuzzo (2004) contend that despite the “crucial importance of language in the construction of realities and selves” (p. 57), PCP pays limited attention to language:
Kelly does not appear to have adequately dealt with the topic of language. The … distinction between non-verbal, and verbal constructs, combined with the warning not to confuse a personal construct with its verbal label, appear to be almost the only reference to language in PCT. (p. 57)
Although agreement is possible in principle with Chiari and Nuzzo’s (2004) point that Kelly (1955) did not adequately deal with language, this paper also seeks to emphasise that Kelly did make several purposeful references to language. In fact, he is very explicit in detailing that the construct has its being outside of or beyond the reach of language.
Despite Kelly’s manifest slippage into naïve or designative assumptions about language, as evidenced by his belief that language is merely a “system of signals” that transmit the activities of one person’s internal mental processes to another, he is adamant that the construct is in fact a mental process that is removed from the reach of that “signal system.” That is, the construct is proposed to exist—somehow—outside of language. The following points, drawn from a close reading of Kelly’s work, underscore and labour the degree to which he espouses this separation between language and the construct. So much so, that his position ultimately suggests that bringing a person’s constructs to language is in fact a human impossibility:
Since it [the construct] is a psychological affair, it has no necessary allegiance to verbal forms [emphasis added] in which classical concepts have been traditionally cast. The personal construct we talk about bears no essential relation to grammatical structure, syntax, words, language, or even communication [emphasis added] … it is simply a psychologically constructed unit for understanding human processes. (Kelly, 1958, p. 87) Some therapists decry “acting out” on the part of the client. They want the client to verbalize all of his constructs. It would be nice if the client could. But he cannot [emphasis added]. (Kelly, 1955, p. 464)
Here is a clear and unequivocal statement of Kelly’s conceptualisation of the construct as a thing that has its essential being beyond the grasp or even scope of language. Kelly also makes several references to the impossibility of any full conceptualisation of one’s construct(s) in language throughout his work. In fact, at times he is explicit that not only are our constructs unable to be brought into language, but also that our constructs are something different from language all together. For example:
Constructs … are ways of construing the world. They are what enables man, and lower animals too, to chart a course of behavior … verbally expressed or utterly inarticulate [emphasis added]. (Kelly, 1955, p. 9) Our view of constructs does not limit them to those which are symbolized by words, or even to those which can be communicated by means of pantomime. Perhaps the psychology of personal constructs is an intellectualized theory. But if, by intellectual controls, one means that the constructs are communicated, then there are some kinds of controls which are not intellectual, since they are not communicated … While the psychology of personal constructs is concerned with personal constructs all of which may not be communicable [emphasis added], and hence is not really what some would call intellectualized theory, it is important that it be itself communicated and that it be intellectually comprehensible. Here we distinguish between the personal constructs about which the theory is concerned and the constructs which constitute the approach of the theory itself. The former may or may not be communicated [emphasis added]; the latter must be communicated to make public sense. (Kelly, 1955, p. 130) Now these abstractions are not necessarily verbalized by him, nor are they necessarily immediately translatable by him into verbalizations, either in the public language or in his own babble [emphasis added]. His abstractions of his own behavior may be structured or construed by him solely in terms of anticipated continuities and cycles. They are still abstractions. They are isolated [emphasis added]. There is still a construct-like discrimination of simultaneous likeness and difference in the way he thinks about them. (1955, p. 173)
The first statement—consistent with the designative account of language—emphasises the primacy of the construct for going about the business of being human and yet also underscores its inherent separation from language. When read in conjunction with the second passage of Kelly’s work, it becomes evident that the construct is in fact resistant to representation in language. Here, then, Kelly is clear that the construct is considered to be something that is other, as something that exists outside of language. Although he gives the impression that a person may indeed “bump into” these structures, he is consistent that he or she will find it difficult to bring these constructs into the public language or even what Kelly terms an individual’s “own babble.” The inherent separation between construct and language is here again writ large.
Recall that Kelly suggested that a person’s psychological process followed networks of channels formed by his or her constructions. In combination these channels form a person’s greater system of constructs that comes to represent for Kelly the Self, the embodiment of all that a person can make of the world. It follows therefore that these channels—and therefore by association the Self—cannot be externalised in language. The following passages further support this reading of Kelly’s (1955) work:
Construing is not to be confounded with verbal formulation. A person’s behavior may be based upon many interlocking equivalence–difference patterns which are never communicated in symbolic speech. (Kelly, 1955, p. 51) It may be that the constructs which are most important in a client’s life have no kind of symbolization at all, either verbal or nonverbal [emphasis added]. (Kelly, 1955, p. 198) It is not easy to find words and sentences to express the deeply rooted constructs [emphasis added] by which the self is fixed into place. (Kelly, 1955, p. 334)
At the core of these statements is a clear suggestion that a person cannot be articulate about matters of the Self. Worded another way, the person that Kelly (1955) envisages is unable to be articulate about the matters of most importance to them. This rests of course on Kelly situating the construct as a thing that has its being outside of language, and that therefore cannot be articulated. The following excerpts further exemplify Kelly’s view:
It is not possible for one to express the whole of his construction system. Many of one’s constructs have no symbols to be used as convenient word handles [emphasis added]. They are therefore difficult, not only for others to grasp and subsume within their own systems, but also difficult for the person himself to manipulate or to subsume within the verbally labeled parts of his system. The fact that they do not readily lend themselves to organization within the verbally labeled parts of the system makes it difficult for a person to be very articulate about how he feels [emphasis added], or for him to predict what he will do in a future situation which, as yet, exists only in terms of verbal descriptions. (Kelly, 1955, p. 110) We recognize that the psychological notion of construing has a wide range of convenience, which is by no means limited to those experiences which people can talk about or those which they can think about privately. (Kelly, 1955, p. 51)
These passages from Kelly (1955) work clearly to identify a theoretical disconnect between language, construct, and thought. Here the person that Kelly conceives of is unable to bring into words the way that the world is for them. As well as taking the view that such an approach is not theoretically reflexive—in that a person is often required and able to be articulate about their inner emotions and feelings—this paper also contends that Kelly’s view of the person is theoretically incoherent. Take for example Kelly’s (1955) introduction to the process of self-characterisation. Despite the way that he has argued that the construct is beyond language and that the person he envisages cannot be articulate about his or her feelings, he goes on to suggest,
If you do not know what is wrong with a person, ask him; he may tell you. The clinician will have to be prepared to do some careful listening, for the answers will be couched in terms of the respondent’s personal constructs. (1955, pp. 322–323)
This extract is unequivocal that for Kelly the construct(s) and a person’s inner feelings can indeed be brought to language, highlighting a significant theoretical discordance within his work. On the one hand, he is resolute that the construct does not lend itself to being brought to language, and yet here he suggests otherwise. A conundrum indeed, perhaps made all the more complex by statements such as these:
These are likely to refer to constructs which not only have a wide range of convenience for the client but also which he cannot be sure he is able to communicate by mere words [emphasis added]. (Kelly, 1955, p. 333) Words, when used as symbols, and they often are so used, are not the constructs they represent; they are representative contextual elements of those constructs [emphasis added]. (Kelly, 1955, p. 200)
Although these passages are consistent with the previous discussion—where Kelly explicitly suggests that the construct is such a high level of abstraction that it is beyond the reach of language—he goes on to emphasise that those aspects of a person’s construction system that he or she is able to bring into words are not constructs themselves. Rather, it is the elements within the construct that he or she is able to bring to language. In order to develop an abstraction that then stands for the construct, a clinical practitioner or someone wishing to apprehend another person’s constructs is surely obligated to subscribe to a naïve, designative, or transparent view of language. Worded another way, the clinician must develop an abstraction of a construct, as an “abstraction of an abstraction.” More specifically, an abstraction of a thing that supposedly cannot come to language. On the topic of words as elements the following quotation from Chiari and Nuzzo (2010) is valuable:
In Kelly’s conceptualisation, constructs are usually symbolised by invoking one of their elements. The elements stand not only for itself, but also for the whole construct. The introduction of a word in the construct context—usually as one of the “like” elements—allows the person to use it as a symbol. This “trick” makes the revision of constructs relatively feasible. (p. 116)
However, consistent with the work of Kelly (1955) who states, “Even the elements which are construed may have no verbal handles by which they can be manipulated and the person finds himself responding to them with speechless impulse” (p. 16), Chiari and Nuzzo (2010) go on to suggest—in the paragraph that proceeds the passage above—a clear incompatibility between language and the elements of the construct:
The lack of word symbol makes it difficult for people to communicate their constructs or their elements, and for the therapist to understand their clients. The clients can act out their constructions, or just sit and have feelings they cannot describe. The therapist will have to infer the client’s constructions, and eventually make recourse to role playing and other “non-intellectual” approaches. (p. 116)
In taking such a position, Chiari and Nuzzo emphasise an untenable relationship between language, the construct, and its elements. This position supports the theoretically problematic nature of Kelly’s position in so far as locating the construct beyond the reach of language clearly suggests that the task of bringing a single construct, let alone an entire construct system, to language is an absolute impossibility. This opens PCP up to questions concerning the degree of reflexivity that is genuinely embodied by the position, as well as the theoretical tenability of the “inner outlook” that is arguably at the centre of Kelly’s position.
The construct represents for Kelly the primordial ontological structure with which the person he envisages comes to understand not only the world but also him or herself. It is the construct that conditions our thoughts, or our being, and as such it embodies precisely those “inner” elements of Kelly’s “inner outlook.” However, if we refer back to the discussion concerning the expressive account of language we will recall that we do not simply have a thought and then bring that thought into words. Instead, thought has its condition in language, where language is the essential medium of this “inner.” Thus, if language is the medium of the “inner,” then that “inner” can readily be realised as an “outlook.” This is because the words that constitute thought as “inner” are not different from those words that can be said aloud as an “outlook.”
Discussion
The previous discussion would suggest that Kelly’s (1955) theoretical position be challenged upon two fronts. First, given that the construct has its being beyond the reach of language—as Kelly himself insists, then his Fundamental Postulate and many of the amplifying corollaries seem theoretically problematic. Second, in situations where a person, for example, a clinician, assumes to have brought another person’s constructs to language for the purpose of clinical practice—that clinician can be challenged for having slipped into assuming the possibility of a designative account of language or something very much like one. That is, in order for Kelly’s (1955) approach to be theoretically sustainable and to produce supposedly legitimate representations of the people encountered in clinical practice and the like, one must accept that language is able to simply point to things—in this case a person’s constructs. However, given that Kelly (1955) is adamant that the construct is beyond the reach of language, questions concerning the likelihood that it is indeed a construct that language is pointing towards seem legitimate. This leaves one to legitimately ask “who or what is being represented by a psychological approach that subscribes to such a position?” With regard to the previous elaboration of the PCP, it is clear that by situating the construct beyond the reach of language, Kelly shut down the possibility of there being outward criteria by way of which a person can bring forward his or her “inner processes” in language as an “outlook.” Certainly Kelly at times contradicts himself, suggesting that a person could bring aspects of his or her construct system to understanding—albeit in his or her own babble. However, the fact that the person that Kelly (1955) envisages can bring aspects of his or her construct system to understanding, and yet the construct itself is nonetheless devoid of outward criteria, poses a theoretical and logical quandary incommensurate with his notion of an “inner outlook.”
Conclusion
Central to the challenge levelled by this paper is a view that in order to make the abstractions of similarity and difference that lie at the core of what a construct is; to make something of an event as a reconstrual; to situate our constructs within a greater system of constructs; and to locate our own construct in relation to the reality of the world as well as the constructs of another person, the construct must come to language. In other words, in order for us to engage in the movement of abstraction that Kelly (1955) sets down, and for the individual that Kelly conceives of to be genuinely able to bring his or her “inner” to understanding as an “outlook,” a more sophisticated conceptualisation of the inextricability of the dialogue of abstraction, thought, and language is required. This re-envisioning of PCP from the perspective of taking greater account of language would require a hermeneutic turn and is indeed work that has already been undertaken by the author. The theoretical position referred to as Hermeneutic Constructivism represents a re-envisioning of PCP from the foundation of Gadamer’s hermeneutic phenomenology and goes a long way toward addressing the issues identified here. In so doing, it provides a suitable alternative for catching a glimpse of the individual going about the business of being human from the perspective of his or her “inner outlook.”
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.