02d_Humanist/Constructivist: Personal Construct Therapy

Question 1

Kelly’s Personal Construct Therapy:

Main Assumptions

Answer 1

People choose the ways they deal with the world

There are always alternative ways to do so

Question 2

Personal Construct Therapy:

Main Focus

Answer 2

Phenomenological Approach

How client experiences the world

Question 3

Personal Construct Therapy:

Construal

Answer 3

How one perceives, interprets and predicts events

Psychological processes are determined by the way one construes events using Personal Constructs

Question 4

Personal Construct Therapy:

Personal Constructs

Answer 4

Bipolar dimensions of meaning
e.g. happy/sad, competent/incompetent

Develop in infancy

Unique to individual

Operate on unconscious or conscious level

Question 5

Personal Construct Therapy:

Individuals as Scientists

Answer 5

Constructs are continually tested and revised based on accuracy of predictions

Question 6

Personal Construct Therapy:

View of Maladaptive Behavior

Answer 6

Pathology is due to inadequate personal constructs

*Kelly rejected medical model of mental illness

Question 7

Personal Construct Therapy:

Anxiety

Answer 7

Recognition that certain events lie outside personal construct system and therefore individual is does not know effective/appropriate behavior

Question 8

Personal Construct Therapy:

Hostility

Answer 8

Result of continued reliance on constructs despite invalidating evidence

Individual attempts to force people/object/events to fit into inaccurate constructs

Question 9

Personal Construct Therapy:

Primary Therapy Goal

Answer 9

Identification and revision/replacement of maladaptive personal constructs

Helps client “make sense” of their experiences

Question 10

Personal Construct Therapy:

Therapeutic Relationship

Answer 10

Therapist and client are mutual experts

“co-experimenters”

Question 11

Personal Construct Therapy:

Assessment of Construal

Answer 11

Repertory Grid (similar to genogram)

Self-Characterization Sketch

Question 12

Personal Construct Therapy:

Self-Characterization Sketch

Answer 12

Client describes themselves from the perspective of someone who knows them well

Question 13

Personal Construct Therapy:

Fixed-Role Therapy

Answer 13

Client acts out daily life as a psychologically different fictional character

Helps clients “try on” and adopt alternative constructs