Principles
The main tenet of PCP theory is the following:
A person's unique psychological processes are channeled by the way s/he anticipates events.
Kelly believed that anticipation and prediction are the main drivers of our mind. "Every man is, in his own particular way, a scientist," said Kelly, in that he is always building up and refining theories and models about how the world works so that he can anticipate events. We start on this at birth (a child discovers, "if I cry, mother will come") and continue refining our theories as we grow up. We build theories -often stereotypes- about other people and also try to control them or impose on others our own theories so that we are better able to predict their actions.
All these theories are built up from a system of constructs. A construct has two extreme points, such as "happy-sad" and we tend to place people at either extreme or at some point in between. Our mind, said Kelly, is filled up with these constructs, at a low level of awareness. Kelly did not use the concept unconscious, instead he believed that some constructs are preverbal, 'their lack of verbal labels often being because they were developed before the person had the use of words' (Winter, 1993, p.244). A given person or set of persons or any event or circumstance can be characterized fairly precisely by the set of constructs we apply to it and the position of the thing within the range of each construct. So Fred for instance may be just half between happy and sad (one construct) and definitively clever rather than stupid (another construct). The baby above may have a preverbal construct "Comes... doesn't come when I cry".
Constructs are applied to anything we put our attention to, including ourselves, and also strongly influence what we fix our attention on. We construe reality constructing constructs. Hence, determining a person's system of constructs would go a long way towards understanding him, especially the person's essential constructs that represent very strong and unchangeable beliefs; and also the constructs a person applies to him/herself.
Read more about this topic: Personal Construct Theory
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“My country is bleeding, my people are perishing around me. But I feel as a South Carolinian, I am bound to tell the North, go on! go on! Never falter, never abandon the principles which you have adopted.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“I am not one of those who have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood for. I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction, as will come upon these again, utter destruction and contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy ... is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)