S05 Departure

"A Genuine New Departure..."
By Robert Hadden Mole
Vol. 9, Issue 1 (Spring 2005)

"A genuine new departure..."

Those were the words of Jerome Bruner, in his 1956 review of The Psychology of Personal Constructs. This new book was, at the time, many things to many people, but almost all could agree Kelly’s two volume magnum opus represented something that was indeed groundbreaking. Bruner would go on further to comment that Kelly’s two volumes were “a spirited contribution to the psychology of personality” that “easily nominate themselves for the distinction of being the single greatest contribution of the past decade to the theory of personality functioning”.

Kelly himself was all-too-aware of the departure of his new book and the radical psychological system introduced within. He writes almost apologetically in its preface.

The Psychology of Personal Constructs may be the only book to introduce a psychological theory that has a section in the preface subtitled “To Whom It May Concern” starting with the line “It is only fair to warn the reader about what may be in store for him”.

Kelly goes on to explain his fair warning: “In the first place, he [the reader] is likely to find missing most of the familiar landmarks of psychology books…There is no ego, no emotion, no motivation, no reinforcement, no drive, no unconscious, no need. There are some words with brand-new psychological definitions, words like foci of convenience, preemption, propositionality, fixed-role therapy, creativity cycle, transitive diagnosis, and the credulous approach. Anxiety is defined in a special systematic way… And to make the heresy complete, there is no extensive bibliography. Unfortunately, all this will make for periods of strange, perhaps uncomfortable reading.”

And if this was not enough, Norton editor Fillmore Sanford started his introduction several pages later by writing: “In the following pages George Kelly conducts, for all to care to follow, an extensive exploration into a strange new land of personality theory and clinical practice.”

Now, fifty years later, with journals, numerous books, a population of articles, and countless electronic exchanges all tracing their foundations back to this one source, The Psychology of Personal Constructs seems anything but strange or uncomfortable.