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George Kelly (1905-1967)
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 Kelly, George A. (1905-1967),
American psychologist. Kelly developed a theory of personality known as personal construct psychology,
whose focus is
on the distinctive ways in which individuals construct and reconstruct
the
meanings of their lives. Because of the breadth of Kelly’s approach,
personal construct concepts and methods have been used to study such
topics as cognitive complexity, psychological disturbance, the
development and breakdown of close
relationships, vocational decision making, education, and
organizational behavior. However, in keeping with Kelly’s original
focus on psychotherapy, his thinking has had its greatest impact in the
areas of clinical and counseling psychology.
Kelly was born to strictly religious parents in the tiny farming
community of Perth, Kansas. As an only child whose family was literally
among the last homesteaders of the American frontier, Kelly developed a
first-hand appreciation for the struggles of the impoverished and
isolated rural families he was later to serve as a psychologist. The
family’s frequent moves and Kelly’s own patchwork education of home
schooling and short-lived enrollments in a succession of schools might
also have deepened his understanding of the struggle to construct
meaningful “role relationships” with others, a theme he was later to
weave into his theory of personality.
After three years of study at Friends University (a Quaker institution)
and a final year at Park College, Kelly graduated with a degree in
physics and mathematics. However, balancing this scientific
involvement,
he also had become highly involved in intercollegiate debate, and
developed a reputation as a winning orator. Kelly’s graduate work was
as varied as his earlier schooling, leading him to study at the
Universities of Kansas, Minnesota, and Edinburgh (Scotland) before
graduating with a Ph.D. in
psychology from the University of Iowa in 1931. In retrospect, Kelly’s
later logical, propositional framing of the psychology of personal
constructs, his use of dramaturgical procedures in therapy, and his
iconoclastic intellectual style can be viewed as outgrowths of this
diverse educational background.
When Kelly entered the job market, America was in the midst of the
Great Depression, and mid-west farming states were reeling under the
impact of the Dust Bowl, a massive drought that resulted in not only
the foreclosure of innumerable family farms, but also the economic
devastation of whole communities. Accepting a faculty appointment
at Fort Hays Kansas State
College in such inauspicious times, Kelly’s attention was soon diverted
from his original interest in experimental psychology to matters of
more practical concern. Under some pressure from his department
chair to
develop an area of specialization, Kelly opened the Psychology Clinic,
and
began to offer free assessment and consultation services to children
and
adolescents. These services quickly grew to include a program of
traveling
extension clinics, in which Kelly, accompanied by a handful of
carefully
selected and meticulously trained students, would provide diagnostic
formulations
and treatment recommendations for students in most of the school
systems
in western Kansas. In the 1930s psychological services in
American
schools were rudimentary at best, and Kelly’s pioneering work in rural
mental
health was sufficiently novel that it was funded directly by an act of
the
state legislature.
Kelly was dislodged from his
position at Fort Hays by the outbreak of World War II, accepting a post
in the aviation psychology branch of
the U.S. Navy for the duration of the conflict. Following the
war,
he taught briefly at the University of Maryland before being hired to
direct the clinical psychology program at the Ohio State University,
where he was to make his most important theoretical
contributions. Drawing on
his longstanding fascination with Korzybski’s general semantics and
Moreno’s psychodrama, Kelly began to fashion a unique perspective that
grounded human attempts at meaning making firmly in the social
realm. The results were
published in his 1200 page magnum opus, "The Psychology of Personal
Constructs"
(1955, reprinted 1991).
At the heart of Kelly’s theory was an image of persons as
incipient scientists , constructing, testing, revising, and
expanding personal theories of self and world that enabled them to
anticipate the recurring themes of their lives. This basic
position was amplified through
11 corollaries detailing the
process of construing, the structure of personal construct systems, and
the social embededness of human knowing. Moreover, critical
aspects
of the theory were operationalized in
repertory grid technique, a mathematical method for mapping
personal
construct systems relevant to a broad range of applications. Both the
theory
and its associated methods were enlisted to provide novel means of
conceptualizing,
assessing, and treating psychological difficulties, defined as various
ways
in which one’s constructions failed to provide a meaningful framework
for
anticipating events or articulating with the perspectives of others.
While
iconoclastic in the context of an American psychological scene
dominated
by behaviorism, Kelly’s theory was nonetheless recognized as a bold
departure,
and international recognition followed. As a consequence of both his
theoretical
contributions and his tireless promotion of the profession of clinical
psychology,
Kelly was elected to the presidencies of both the consulting and
clinical
divisions of the American Psychological Association in 1954-1955 and
1956-1957,
respectively. He died suddenly in March of 1967, after moving to
Brandeis
University at the invitation of Abraham Maslow.
Ironically, perhaps, the influence of Kelly’s theorizing has grown
rather than diminished since his death. Beginning in 1975, a
series of biennial International Congresses on Personal Construct
Psychology have
been organized in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the
Netherlands,
Italy, Spain, Germany, and Australia, with regional conferences serving
to support the growing interest in the theory on alternate years.
Moreover, the dozens of books and thousands of journal articles issuing
from the theory were augmented by the publication of the International
Journal of Personal Construct Psychology in 1988, which broadened
its title and coverage to the Journal of
Constructivist Psychology (Philadelphia, PA: Taylor and Francis) in
1994. In 2004. the online journal Personal Construct Theory & Practice was founded. As
a result, personal construct psychology can now be considered a viable
specialty
with a diverse international following, which is both an historical
forerunner
and vital participant in the burgeoning field of constructivist
psychology.
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