When I rehearse ideas like these, written down so clearly in the original
text, I find it not hard at all to see both social constructionist
notions and Kellyan ideas as part of a view point which subsumes them
both. Coming to Kelly as I have done after half a century of messing
around with other ideas, it seems abundantly obvious to me that his 1955
was a teaching book, a missionary document, with conversion as its
purpose, intended too as a framework for clinicians. The richness of ideas
which run like threads of gold through the text is quite incredible to a
newcomer. I've often thought that if we took out and held up for public
examination, rather than the fundamentals, the poetic, romantic too
if you like, notions that Kelly slipped in here and there (like 'riding
the darting moment'), we might have a stronger basis from which to argue,
as some of us do, that PCT is not incompatible with or inconsistent with
social constructionism and that Kelly's exposition of it has the power of
psychoanalytic notions which have received a great deal of literary
attention.
I wonder too if 'levels of analysis' is what this is about. I've used the
metaphor of the seeing eye in thinking about this myself. Where do you
place the camera?
Gwyneth Daniel
University of Reading
UK
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