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UNDERSTANDING, EXPLANATION,
AND PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS
Trevor Butt
Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of Huddersfield, UK
Personal construct psychology can be read either as an attempt to understand people by appreciating how the world appears to them, or to explain their behaviour in terms of personal constructs that inhabit some inte- rior Cartesian realm. In this article, I maintain that this understanding versus explanation distinction (Dilthey, 1988) is useful and helps us clarify the personal construct project. By examining the phenomenol- ogical strengths of personal construct methods, we can approach an understanding of the person that appre- ciates the complexity of the lived world.
Key Words: personal constructs; phenomenology; understanding versus explanation
UNDERSTANDING VERSUS EXPLANA-
TION
It was Dilthey (1988) who first proposed a strong distinction between causal explanation and under- standing. In the natural sciences, causal explana- tions of natural phenomena are sought, ideally through the use of experiments where independ- ent variables are manipulated and dependent vari- ables subsequently measured. But Dilthey (1988) argued that the social sciences should not model themselves on the natural sciences. In the com- plex lived world that we inhabit, we cannot al- ways expect to find causal connections. Under- standing human action is more like interpreting a text than explaining the movement of particles. In the interpretation of a text, we move back and forth between an examination of a word or and the sentence in which it is embedded. The sen- tence is made up of words whose ambiguity is dispelled by their context. Similarly, we under- stand sentences only when we read them in the broader contexts in which they themselves are embedded. Only then can we pick out say, a metaphoric or ironical sense intended. We move to and fro between part and whole to grasp the meaning in what has been termed a hermeneutic circle (Ihde, 1986). So, for example, we might read the word ‘groom’ as applied to children and realise that it is not being used either as a noun (one who looks after horses) in its literal sense as a verb (to comb or care for an animal, usually a
horse). It is only in the context of the current so- cietal anxiety about paedophilic strangers that we apprehend its metaphoric meaning, along with the menacing connotations. In the same way then, we make sense of human action by reading it in the context in which it occurs. So when I say ‘I un- derstand why you did that’, I do not mean that we have access to your private thoughts and feelings. Instead, I mean that it makes some sense to me, given what I can see of the situation in which you appeared to be placed. A more refined under- standing is achieved if and when I can appreciate exactly how things did appear to you: your con- struction of events. Now one might argue, following Rorty (1982), that explanation is itself a type of under- standing, and that the understanding versus ex- planation dichotomy is too crude to capture the scientific venture. But for the personal construct theorist, any construct should be evaluated in terms of its utility. And I maintain that it is a use- ful construct. In the area of personality, there is an ever increasing tendency towards a reduction- ism that looks for causal explanation in either brain science or an interior Cartesian realm (Butt, 2004). The rejection of causal explanation high- lights the value of a science of personality that promotes an understanding based on the constru- ing of the other’s processes of construction. Clearly, the psychology of personal constructs (Kelly, 1955) is one approach to personality that is firmly grounded in this type of understanding.
In this sense it is a phenomenological approach; one that is primarily interested in the way in which the world appears to people (Kelly, 1955, p. 42). Both phenomenology and the pragmatic tradition in which Kelly worked are firmly monist and not dualist (Merleau-Ponty, 1944/1962; Dewey, 1910/1993). Both are committed to un- derstanding phenomena at the level at which they appear, avoiding both reductionism and recourse to a mind made up of different substance to the body. But although contemporary theorists see strong links between Kelly’s pragmatism and phenomenology (Warren 1998; Butt, 2003, 2004), Kelly himself maintained a distance be- tween his work and phenomenology (Kelly, 1969a). Reading The Psychology of Personal Constructs , it is easy to think of personal con- structs as personal cognitions, the property of a ghost in the machine (Ryle, 1949) that exist be- hind and indeed power behaviour. In this article, I will argue that an understanding of people is best achieved by avoiding this sort of explanation. I will begin by examining personal construct the- ory’s links with phenomenology.
PHENOMENOLOGY
Kelly (1969a) famously declared that PCT could not be subsumed under any other theoretical ap- proach. In his 1955 work, he underlined the simi- larities between PCT and what he termed ‘neo- phenomenology’. But elsewhere, (Kelly, 1969b) he misunderstood phenomenology, mistaking it for a type of introspectionism. Holland (1977) points out that it was a very partial, selective reading of European phenomenologists that was taken up by American theorists Rogers and Maslow. It is likely that this was the only expo- sure to phenomenology that Kelly had. Phenome- nology was a methodology devised by Husserl in the early twentieth century, to overcome the same Cartesian dualisms that were targeted by pragma- tism, the tradition in which Kelly wrote. For phe- nomenologists, the dualisms person/world and self/other are dialectical dualities where focus on either pole misses the vitality of the relationship between them. Husserl developed Brentano’s concept of intentionality that refers to a correla- tion between the person and the world, or con- struct and event. There is no consciousness with- out the world, and there is no ‘lived-world’ with-
out the person. Phenomenologists reject the idea that there is a real world (of events) behind the world of appearances (or construction) that we represent to ourselves in perception. Instead, all we have is the lived world’ – a psychology of personal constructs. ‘Intention’ emphasises that we are always conscious of something. We cannot experience desire unless it is desire for something, fear unless it is of something, thought unless it is about something. We are intimately connected or correlated with the world. Husserl’s vocabulary of noema and noesis (world and the way it is ex- perienced) translates approximately into Kelly’s ‘events’ and ‘constructs’. There is a real world of events beyond our comprehension, one that would exist if humankind had never graced the surface of the earth. But all we can know is the lived world, our construction of it. Phenomenol- ogical reflection is not to be equated with intro- spection, a subjective mentalistic exercise that examines internal mental representations of a real external world (Ihde, 1986). Instead, this reflec- tion, or phenomenological reduction, attempts to get beyond our natural ways of seeing, our taken- for-granted assumptions, in a return “to the things themselves!” (Husserl; cited in Ihde, 1986, p. 29). So the reduction, far from being an examination of the contents of the mind, is an exhortation to stand back, and put aside our habitual construc- tions in a fresh look at the world of events. A close and fresh look at events always reveals more than is apparent from our ‘natural attitude’ - that collection of folk wisdoms and assumptions that make up the social reality that pre-dates each of us as individuals. Events will bear many more constructions than are grasped immediately. This clearly parallels Kelly’s philosophical position (derived from Dewey, 1993) of constructive al- ternativism. However, although Husserl addressed both the subject/object and the self/other, dualism, he was less exercised by that of mind/body. He was con- sidered by those who followed him – Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty - to have privileged reason with his proposal of a transcendental ego , an ‘I’ that in some way extracted itself from the intentional correlation of event/construct. For Husserl it was as though the intellect preceded the social and physical world. It is this ego that re- flects on experience, or construction, and makes further sense of it (Ihde, 1986). The existential
understanding the two readings is to see them as occupying the two poles of the lived world/objective thought construct.
PCT AND OBJECTIVE THOUGHT
I have argues that the person in existential phe- nomenology is certainly not that straw man imag- ined by Kelly (1969b), living in a world of dreams and unconnected to reality. But neither is it the person of naïve realism, who is in contact with the real world via their senses and represents this reality in an internal cognitive space. How- ever, Kelly famously championed the ‘person as scientist’, a person primarily in the business of prediction and control. PCT can be read as both a somewhat positivistic cognitive theory, as well as a phenomenological approach. Kelly paid tribute to Dewey, recognising that in many respects the psychology of personal constructs reflects Dewey’s pragmatism. Like Dewey, he disliked Cartesian dualism (1955, 872). But elsewhere (1955, p. 17) he was less committed to monism. In this enigmatic passage he sounds as though he has swallowed a philosophical dictionary: Ontologically, our position is identifiable as a form of monism , although in view of the many complex varieties of ontology, the differentiation of its monistic form from its pluralistic aspects is hardly worth the effort. If it is a monism, it is a substantival monism that we are talking about; yet it is neutral , and, like Spinoza, we are pre- pared to apply attributive pluralism to the sub- stance whenever our purposes might be served thereby. (1955, p. 17. Italics in the original), Perhaps the uncharacteristically pompous tone adopted here merely indicates that Kelly knew that he was straying out of his philosophical depth, and felt the need to shore up what he was saying with some big words and names. But what was he saying? It is not at all clear, but we can perhaps get some indication from the direction he takes in the next section of his chapter on con- structive alternativism. Here, he says that: “Whether a theory is called ‘psychological’, physiological’ or ‘sociological’ probably depends upon its original focus of convenience” (p. 18). As he had argued in his Fundamental Postulate, there are not events (for example, like emotions) that belong exclusively in these different realms, only events that can be construed physiologically,
psychologically or sociologically. Presumably then, this is ‘attributive pluralism’; another phrase for constructive alternativism. But perhaps also, Kelly wanted to leave the door open for explana- tion is dualist terms. The vocabulary of ‘construct systems’, ‘loosening and tightening’ and ‘con- striction and dilation’ does, after all, conjure up images of cognitive structures with causal con- nections to surface behaviour. So PCT is open to a reading that implicitly rests on the natural attitude of dualism, and more- over, on the causal explanations that inhabit the objective thought of the natural sciences. This assumes the existence of a construct system within the person which is the cause of behav- iour. PCT’s methodology can be seen as provid- ing a sort of psychic X-ray, in which an individ- ual’s system of internal constructs is revealed and can then be the focus of therapeutic attention. When the construct system is modified, behav- iour will right itself in its wake. The natural atti- tude of today leads us to incorporate a dualism that sees minds inside bodies and constructs be- hind behaviour. When practitioners and academ- ics read PCT, they are likely to interpret it within this framework, and much of the published work in the field demonstrates this. Science is, after all, the most valued enterprise as we enter the new millennium, and both status and material re- sources flow towards its practitioners. The public wants psychologists to be able to tell them why people think, feel and act as they do, what moti- vates serial killers, psychopaths and fascist dicta- tors. People want to know exactly how traumas impact on them, and what the causal relationship is between childhood experience and adult life. The prizes are awarded for being able to success- fully profile offenders, predict behaviour and ex- plain neurotic misery. There are few for under- standing the life worlds of others, aiming to in- terpret their actions. Merleau-Ponty (1941/1983) saw Gestalt psy- chology and psychoanalysis as the most promis- ing psychologies of his day. Both pick out de- tailed and important aspects of the lifeworld and both can be read phenomenologically. Yet both fell under the spell of objective thought, looking for brain states that explain perception, or child- hood experiences that cause adult neurosis. The English translation of Freud translated the Ger- man it (Es), I (Ich) and over-I (Über-Ich) as id, ego and superego. The Latin terms transform
ways of experiencing the self into structures and entities within the person. Freud’s phenomenol- ogical insights were striking, but he wanted to be recognised as a scientist. Merleau-Ponty’s project was to rescue the insights of these theories; to interpret them in terms of the lived world rather than objective thought. And Kelly also wrote in two voices. He cele- brated scientific endeavour in psychology, indeed recommended the person as scientist as a meta- phor that empowered the person. This can locate PCT in the camp of the natural sciences where causal explanations are sought within the individ- ual for his or her behaviour. ‘Constructs’ are seen as entities that inhabit the individual rather than construing as a process that goes on primarily between them. Yet Kelly also saw the person as defying description and categorisation, was scep- tical about laws in psychology, and doubted the value of sequential explanation. Even in his Fun- damental Postulate, he refused to talk of cogni- tion, affect and behaviour, preferring to consider ‘a person’s processes’ in an implicit acknowl- edgement of the internal relations that obtain here. It is this latter voice that constitutes a phe- nomenological interpretation (or, as Chiari & Nuzzo [1996] term it a ‘hermeneutic’ constructiv- ism). Just as Merleau-Ponty’s thought may be drawn on to achieve a different reading of Gestalt Psychology and Psychoanalysis, so it can help us see PCT as a methodology for understanding the lived world.
PCT AND THE LIVED WORLD
The lived world is ambiguous
In his 1955 work, Kelly maintained a separation of events in the real world, and our individual constructions of them. This can be seen as a Kantian position, distinguishing between noumena and phenomena. Nevertheless, it is the alternative constructions that the personal con- struct psychologist has to work with. In his later work, Kelly (1969c) further emphasised this, claiming that he was ‘no longer a realist’ in the sense that the psychotherapist has to work not with what has happened to clients, but how they interpret it; “There is nothing so obvious that its appearance is not altered when it is seen in a dif- ferent light” (Kelly, 1969c, p.225). His advocat-
ing of the credulous approach precisely mirrors Husserl’s phenomenological attitude in contrast to the natural attitude. The phenomenological attitude is one of openness to new possibilities and constructions. Ihde (1986) outlines the method, or phenomenological reduction, that fa- cilitates this attitude:
- Bracketing - the analyst attempts to bracket off their preconceptions in understanding phenom- ena.
- Phenomenological description - phenomena are described, but causal explanation is avoided.
- Horizontalization - No assumptions about rela- tive importance of phenomena are made.
We can clearly see Kelly’s (1955) ‘credulous ap- proach’ in these rules. Clients’ descriptions of their experience will be couched in terms of their construct systems; the relationships between their dimensions of meaning. The therapist must bracket off any impulse to rush to explanation based on his or her system. Careful listening is required. The credulous approach is the phe- nomenological attitude. Kelly insisted that the credulous approach does not imply that the thera- pist should be captured by the client’s construc- tion. Instead, he or she should be able to subsume it, recognising it as one valid formulation. In phe- nomenological terms, it is this merging of hori- zons that enables intersubjectivity to emerge. In everyday life, our engagement with the world is primarily pre-reflective; out in front of what we can say about it, but nonetheless intentional. In psychotherapy, the therapist helps clients reflect on their intentionality in a hope that this produces increased agency and power of choice. PCT offers us a range of extraordinarily pow- erful techniques for helping people to spell out their intentionality. Other broadly phenomenol- ogical approaches rely exclusively on lengthy interviews for this purpose (See Moustakas, 1994). The problem is always how the inter- viewer manages to bracket off his or her interpre- tations from those of the interviewee. Generally this is achieved through two strategies: a recogni- tion of this danger is itself seen as a safeguard, and interpretations are always shared with the interviewee, allowing for his or her meanings to predominate. Kellians have always recognised the importance of reflexivity, but more importantly, their techniques guarantee fewer projections on the part of the therapist/interviewer. So in ladder-
focus leads us to recognise that we cannot sepa- rate out thought, feeling and behaviour, any more than we can see a clear boundary between the personal and the social world. When personal construct psychologists accept the ambiguity of the lived world, they can contribute significantly to the understanding of it, while at the same time foregoing the inevitably disappointing project of trying to explain it mechanistically.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trevor Butt , Ph. D., trained as a clinical psy- chologist before working at the University of Huddersfield, where he is now Reader in Psy- chology. He has published in the areas of per- sonal construct theory, phenomenology, and psy- chotherapy, and is the joint author (with Vivien Burr) of Invitation to Personal Construct Psy- chology. E-mail: t.butt@hud.ac.uk.
REFERENCE
Butt, T. (2004). Understanding, explanation, and personal constructs. Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 1, 21- (Retrieved from http://www.pcp- net.org/journal/pctp04/butt04.pdf) Received: 31 Dec 2003 - Accepted: 12 Jan 2004 - Published : 31 Jan 2004
