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

The inspiration for this episode came from a BBC Radio 4 programme, The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O'Sullivan. The programme is an abridged version of her book. This episode looks at Kelly's definition of disorder, something quite different from current diagnostic manuals. His version is more likely to help us to understand and help the person because it is focussed on their construing and this is something that could change. Kelly said, "Perhaps the proper question is not what is a disorder but where, and the therapist question is not who needs treatment but what needs treatment" (Kelly 1991).

Reference:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00291y8

This episode looks at De Boeck’s (1981) analysis of Kelly's statements about loose

construing. This is a helpful summary. If you would like to read the paper, it is largely about

grids analysis of construing in schizophrenia, so it may not suit everyone.

Reference

Van den Bergh, O., de Boeck, P., and Claeys. W. (1985) Schizophrenia: What is Loose in

Schizophrenic Construing? Button, E. (Ed.) Personal Construct Theory & Mental Health.

Room Helm,Australia

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