This month, we are going to look at what Kelly meant by ‘accepting' our client. He was focussed on accepting our client’s constructions, and we need to able to do that at the same time as holding our own professional constructions of the client's construing.

During this episode I refer to Dr. Ross Green, author of The Explosive Child. He shares his approach and resources on his website for parents/carers and professionals: https://livesinthebalance.org/ .

His resources for the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions are free: https://livesinthebalance.org/cps-materials-paperwork/

This episode is a summary of the corollaries. Knowing about them is essential if you are trying to understand the theory of Personal Construct Psychology. A corollary is an implication of a theory, so if the Fundamental Postulate is accepted this means that people DO anticipate events, these 11 corollaries follow on from this. They are the detail of the theory. You might find that this episode is rather dry but in terms of completeness, any person can get the basics of PCP by listening to all the episodes of this podcast.

References

Kelly (1963) A Theory of Personality. The Psychology of Personal Constructs.

Cummins & Moran (2022). A Foundation Course in Personal Construct Psychology: The Coventry Course handbook (Coventry Constructivist Centre Publications on Personal Construct Psychology).

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

Kelly’s Psychology of Personal Constructs is his theory of personality and I thought we would have a few sessions about basic PCP theory. The theory may be new to you, or provide a refresher and I will include Kelly’s own explanations. Some of the terms he uses are not so familiar to today’s population so I will do my best clarify and elaborate in everyday language and provide examples. Why does understanding the theory matter? If you want to understand how to apply the theory to a new experience, or if you want to devise new techniques to understand the people you work with, then understanding of the theory will be helpful.

References

Kelly (1963) A Theory of Personality. The Psychology of Personal Constructs.

Cummins & Moran (2022). A Foundation Course in Personal Construct Psychology: The Coventry Course handbook (Coventry Constructivist Centre Publications on Personal Construct Psychology).

This episode provides my own key messages for PCP therapy, using the introductory chapter of my book, A Beginner's Guide to Personal Construct Therapy with Children and Young People. The principles apply to working with any other age group too.

Details of where you can find the book are here: https://drawingtheidealself.co.uk/bookshop.

Creating a timeline is really useful way to explore a problem. Here we think about the kind of questions we might ask a client so we get a better understanding of the development of a problem over time. They key is to be very curious and to ask searching questions gently and the timeline provides a visual guide to that discussion.

Reference

Kelly's seven questions are summarised on p.84-5 in Personal Construct Psychology in Pictures. Key aspects of PCP theory - available free rom my website: drawingtheidealself.co.uk.

This episode has a focus on counselling in schools but the principles will also be useful for other counselling work. Truneckova and Viney’s model is laid out nicely in their paper and I summarise it here.

References:

Deborah Truneckova & Linda L. Viney (2012) Personal construct psychology

model of school counselling delivery, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 40:5, 431-448. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2012.718739

Cummins & Moran (2023) The PCP Pocketbook of Personal Construct Psychology Techniques

Moran (2023) PCP in Pictures. Free via drawingtheidealself.co.uk

This episode focuses on construing in dementia and the challenges that presents to the carer, particularly if they are caring for a parent. I refer to a paper by Mike Bender and Sally Robbins who write about the impact of dementia on construing and on the construing system. The implications of changes in the construing of the person and their child are significant.
If you work with people who would be described as having difficulties with anger, there is a new lost cost book out from Peter Cummins and Diane Allen at the Coventry Constructivist Centre: A Beginner's Guide to Interpreting Anger using Personal Construct Psychology. It is available only on Amazon because that keeps our costs to a minimum level and we don't need to make the book more expensive. You can use this link or do a search on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/ilpCNc0.

References

Bender, M. and Robbins, S. (2006). Making sense of dementia Ch. 10 in Caputi, P, (Ed.) Personal Construct Psychology: New Ideas.

Mitchell, W. (2009) Somebody I Used to Know.

This episode is about the PCP way of doing a useful therapy session in a one-off session. The evidence for using a single session, or One-at-a-time therapy is that a single session can be helpful. Tom Ravenette has a useful paper on this which I use in this episode but you can also take a look at Windy Dryden’s model.

References:

Personal construct Psychology and the assessment of young people: the ‘one-off’ interview. Ch. 13 in Ravenette, T. (1999). Personal Construct Theory in Educational Psychology. A Practitioner’s View.

Windy Dryden Single Session Therapy on You Tube:

https://youtu.be/wIcuOVOABRw?feature=shared

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT_XmacU83U