The
first author was anxious flying 15 hours west to an unknown
land, but the second was better equipped with construct
dimensions from Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country.
We were both relieved to discover that coffee was still coffee,
even if it tasted better than in West Texas. The friendly
Australians had little difficulty understanding Texan and were
patient with our struggles with Australian. Australians seemed
to embrace diversity, whether understanding dialects from the
other side of the world or freely mixing cuisines between
continents and hemispheres. We found no bad food in Australia,
whether in fine restaurants or outback roadhouses. Perhaps
given the wide range of new experiences to construe, we found
ourselves focusing on concrete physical dimensions--one of our
favorite recurring experiences was chocolate mudcake.
With
erotic food, stimulating wines and lagers, breathtaking
landscapes, heartrending art, ancient cultures, sacred rock
formations, the world’s largest coral reef, unique flora and
fauna, death defying adventures to be sought, or avoided, one
might expect the congress to be an incidental experience. But
even the nearby Brisbane museums and Glass House Mountains did
not pull us from the sessions. The vistas shared by the
presenters were equally captivating. Their lived experiences
were well-expressed, less as pre-packaged answers than as
invitations toward future possibilities. Just as our travel
guides gave us only fleeting glimpses of the riches of
Australia, these notes provide only crude sketches of a very few
of the conference experiences, most notable of which were the
informal and more formal conversations with fellow delegates
from Australia, China, Germany, Latvia, Mexico, New Zealand, the
Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Jörn
Scheer’s keynote address invited us to consider the implications
of George Kelly and Don Bannister’s forays into the political
sphere. Jörn’s extensive work establishing internet resources
for personal construct psychology provides a possible venue for
international political action. The value base of personal
construct psychology approaches the other as a construing
person, equal to oneself, providing an invitational posture
towards dialogue across disparate worlds.
A
number of presenters elaborated experiences for which western
cultures have often offered simplistic, stereotypic
constructions. Robert Neimeyer’s keynote address illustrated
how personal construct and narrative psychologies can enrich our
understanding of grieving processes and our ability to be
helpful to the bereaved. Other presenters applied personal
construct psychology to experiences of bereaved parents;
experiences of abuse and other violent victimization; resolving
political violence, and creating alternatives to psychiatric
diagnosis.
Another keynote presenter, David Winter, discussed constructions
of love from literature, from RepGrid and other studies of
students, and from therapy clients’ constructions of their
relationships. Other presenters elaborated other core aspects
of relating such as self-other permanence and transpersonal
reverence. Applications to helping relationships also included
caregiving of persons with severe mental illness, dealing with
betrayal, suicide and anorexia, adoption practices, couple
relationships, breaking down cultural barriers with deaf
clients, autism and stuttering, work with children and
adolescents, professional supervision, forensic assessment, and
reeducation of mental health workers.
Trevor
Butt’s keynote address anticipated a growing legacy of George
Kelly’s emphasis on understanding persons rather than
explaining them within a causal nexus. Outlining a growing
emphasis on pragmatism within social psychology and other social
sciences, he inspired us to create new possibilities with
others, rather than nailing them to a sequence of antecedants
and consequences. Other presentations reflecting this science of
possibilities, in addition to clinical presentations discussed
previously, applied personal construct psychology to recreation
of organizational and other social contexts, such as dissolving
gendered perceptions of professions, diversity consulting,
constructions of ecological processes in farm landscapes,
organizational leadership and career planning, understanding use
of informational systems, educational advising, academic
publishing, and coaching and sports. Presenters expanded
research and assessment methodologies, including the RepGrid and
narrative analysis.
Describing nature as “a vast network of interdependent
continuous processes,” Spencer McWilliams shared his journey
integrating his practice of personal science with his practice
of ordinary mind Zen. During the evening of creative
construing, he supplemented this formal workshop with a
photographic slide presentation of images of impermanence:
textures of rusting metals, patterns in the sand, rocks carved
by the wind, fleeting experiences that we might pass unnoticed.
The evening of creative construing organized by Bill Warren and
Jörn Scheer (and disorganized by other participants) further
elaborated the new CCC cycle (chaos-creativity-chaos) through
poetry and story readings, song, dance, magic, and both abstract
and concrete nonsense. Other conference activities providing
opportunities to creatively loosen constructions included a
presentation on tattoos as nonverbal symbols of core construing,
a workshop on writing as construing, and a performance by an
aboriginal dance troupe. Chaos and creativity were also shared
during social outings to the Queensland Art Gallery, the Lone
Pine Koala Sanctuary, and the banquet at a restaurant
overlooking the Brisbane River.
After
the conference, these authors explored the Northeast coast and
the Red Center by car. Driving through the Northern Territory,
we pondered the experience of being upside down. The first
author remarked that perhaps those from Australia think that we
are the ones who live upside down. The second remarked that he
has never seen a globe with Australia on top. The first
reminded him that perhaps this represents a nordicentric bias in
the manufacture of globes…
Returning home to the Northern hemisphere we felt much more
upside down than in Australia. Is this jet lag—or the vertigo
of possibilities sampled at the conference? We dreamed of
remaining in Oz, where infinite possibilities seemed as
ubiquitous as chips, but instead we reluctantly returned to
wresting new channels from the accretions of our everyday
academic lives. We are grateful anew to the conference
delegates who suggested maps toward constructivist practice. We
particularly thank Beverly Walker for our visit to her home on
the beach, where she and David Winter wrote the epic Annual
Review of Psychology article with their feline assistants Toby
and Harriett. We hope to have chances to apply suggestions from
their presentation on the academic publishing process.
Tantalizingly over the horizon, the promise of the Victoria
conference next summer keeps us looking ahead to further
dialogues of possibility.
Brisbane
