Gabriele Chiari

• Ph.D.
• Co-Director at School of Specialization in Constructivist Psychotherapy

This paper explores the intersubjective process of mutual recognition, drawing on a narrative-hermeneutic elaboration of Kelly’s personal construct theory. Kelly’s notions of dependency and role, Honneth’s and Ricoeur’s philosophical reflections on mutual recognition and intersubjective relationships, and Ricoeur’s understanding of narrative identi...

Riassunto. Prendendo come riferimento principale la teoria dei costrutti personali applicata alla psicoterapia, l'articolo è volto a mostrare come, nel corso degli ultimi anni, i punti di divergenza rispetto alla psicoanalisi si siano andati riducendo. Si tratta di un riavvicinamento tra le due scuole che deriva dagli ultimi sviluppi relazionali de...

Some of the arguments presented by Mascolo and Kallio in their article, “The Phenomenology of Between: An Intersubjective Epistemology for Psychological Science” are discussed. The aim of Mascolo and Kallio’s work is commended, given their efforts to overcome purely subjectivist or purely objectivist approaches, not only in psychological research b...

La parziale trascrizione della prima seduta di psicoterapia con Laura offre lo spunto per mostrare in che modo il caso potrebbe essere inquadrato nei termini della psicoterapia nar-rativo-ermeneutica, elaborazione italiana della psicoterapia dei costrutti personali. Il pro-blema presentato sembra rimandare ad un cambiamento già in atto nel modo in...

Lo psicologo è al suo meglio quando parla il linguaggio delle ipotesi e non quando cerca di imporre delle certezze psicologiche ai suoi clienti. Ci sono sfortunatamente molti psicologi-forse la maggioranza di essi-che pensano che non sia il caso di usare il linguaggio delle ipotesi quando parlano direttamente con le persone; è un linguaggio, pensan...

The rising interest for corporeity demonstrated by some recent psychotherapeutic approaches seems to accompany a reduced importance attributed to verbal language and conversation in the therapeutic process, to such a degree as to make body language the privileged tool for the understanding of the client's system of personal meanings. Personal const...

Personal Construct Theory (PCT) – a theory of personality with particular application to psychotherapy – has been elaborated around the middle of the XXth century by a man born near Perth, Kansas: George Alexander Kelly (April 28, 1905 - March 6, 1967). This book is a tribute to his person and his work.

This paper lists all the known works of George A. Kelly, published and unpublished, sorted according to the year of their writing or publication. Compared to other bibliographies of Kelly’s writings, the following includes many amendments and integrations. DOI links are also added, when available.

This article deals with the subject of personal change. As such, one could be tempted to say that it deals with psychology as a whole: What else should psychology be concerned with? But this is not exactly how things are, as I will argue by answering a first question: Is psychology, as a discipline, mainly concerned with the study of human change?...

Il panorama della psicologia si è arricchito negli ultimi anni con il diffondersi di una concezione costruttivista della conoscenza. Tale concezione rimanda alla costruzione di mondi personali molteplici, che variano in seguito alla riconfigurazione dell’esperienza, come le figure geometriche di un caleidoscopio. Il volume si propone nella prima pa...

Hermeneutic constructivist psychotherapy " is the name given to the Italian elaboration of the personal construct psychotherapy proposed by George A. Kelly, in the light of a narrative -hermeneutic reading of his personal construct theory (PCT). Personal disorders are regarded as the person's active attempt at conserving a social adaptation, and tr...

Psicoterapia costruttivista ermeneutica " è il nome dato all'elaborazione italiana della psi-coterapia dei costrutti personali proposta da George A. Kelly, alla luce di una lettura in chiave narrativo-ermeneutica della sua teoria dei costrutti personali (TCP). I disturbi per-sonali vengono considerati come il tentativo attivo da parte della persona...

The postmodern approaches in psychology (psychological constructivism, social constructionism, symbolic interactionism, narrative psychology) share the attempt at overcoming the Cartesian subject–object dualism and affirming the view of people as meaning-generating beings. For this reason, they take advantage of a dialogue with the philosophical tr...

Though personal construct theory (PCT) is commonly considered an early expression of epistemological constructivism, its reading in terms of a narrative hermeneutic approach is feasible, and could result in significant changes in its application to psychotherapy. After an exploration of the phenomenological and hermeneutic signs in PCT, a tentative...

George A. Kelly, a psychologist born in Kansas, began to elaborate personal construct theory in the first half of the twentieth century; Humberto R. Maturana, a Chilean biologist, started to conceive his theory of autopoiesis during the second half of the same century. The two were unknown to each other, yet their theories show striking similaritie...

In this part of our work about a comparison between Kelly's personal construct theory and phenomenology, we enter the fields of psychotherapy and research. The topic of intersub-jectivity, meant as original recognition of the other's subjectivity, provides a backdrop for both phenomenological clinic and Kellyan psychotherapy. Though Kelly never use...

L'interesse crescente per la corporeità mostrato da alcuni recenti approcci psicoterapeutici sembra accompagnarsi ad un ridimensionamento dell'importanza del linguaggio verbale e della conversazione nel processo terapeutico, fino ad arrivare a fare del linguaggio del corpo lo strumento privilegiato per la comprensione del sistema di significati per...

Kelly’s personal construct theory, put forward in 1955, is considered the first constructivist theory of personality and the first expression of those contemporary psychotherapeutic perspectives grounded on a constructivist view of knowledge. Notwithstanding the similarities between psychological constructivism and the phenomenological-hermeneutic...

In the first part of their work, the Authors substantiated the strong similarities between Kelly’s personal construct theory and phenomenology, notwithstanding the rejection of the latter from the American psychologist. In this second article the Authors go so far as to uphold the thesis that Kellyan theory even represents an example of the realiza...

George Kelly's personal construct theory (PCT) has been accused of disregarding the role of emotion in human life. This charge originates from a misunderstanding of PCT's basic assumptions. Kelly deals with experiences commonly called “emotional” in terms of dimensions of transition according to a genuinely constructivist epistemology. A review of...

The psychotherapeutic relationship in psychoanalytic, cognitive and personal constructivist perspectivesA reconstructive relationship

A psychological understanding of interpersonal processes in terms of complementarity is not new. It is enough to mention Buber (the title of our paper refers to an expression of his), as well as Bateson and his definitions of double description, binocular vision and complementary and symmetric relations. We would like to clarify the nature of compl...

(create) According to epistemological constructivism, a person is supposed to look at an independently existing world, but personal (as well as scientific) knowledge does not (can not) reflect an "objective" ontological reality: it reflects none other than a viable ordering of a world constituted by our experience within the constraints of the "rea...

A Revolutionary AlternativeFacts and Theories: A Controversial RelationshipPersonal Constructivism and CognitivismConstructivism within Contemporary Human SciencesPersonal Construct Systems and Autopoietic SystemsPersonal Constructivism and Social ConstructionismLanguage and ConversationsPersonal Constructivism and Postmodern PsychologyConclusions

As the constructivist movement spreads throughout the contemporary psychological literature, the meaning of the term constructivism is loosening and has become permeable to rather different approaches. This excessive permeability is one of the reasons why in recent years there has been a proliferation of the reasons why in recent years there has be...

Following an outline of a constructivist conceptualization of dependency, we investigated the possibility of differentiating developmental paths by means of dependency grids. On the basis of our hypothesis, three alternative personal paths of dependency were expected, each initiated by the main transition of aggressiveness, threat, and guilt that t...

Starting from constructs' range of convenience as a central criterion, a model of the hierarchical organization of a personal construct system is developed by using elementary tools from set and graph theories. According to a radical constructivist point of view, constructs with their dichotomous nature are seen as the primitive objects, and the el...

Se i modelli teorici cognitivisti sui disturbi psicosomatici si rifanno tutti alla relazione tra malattia somatica e conoscenza personale, il modo di intendere questa relazione è profondamente diverso nelle teorie (e nelle terapie) cognitive ad orientamento razionalista e in quelle ad orientamento costruttivista. L'articolo descrive sinteticamente...

Contends that consideration of the relation of mutual specification between a distinguished whole and the parts distinguished in it, and of their specification of 2 nonintersecting phenomenal domains, constitutes the starting point for a radical constructivist redefinition of the mind–body problem (MBP), where the opposition between mind and body t...

Twenty male asthmatic children (ages 9-11) and their controls were interviewed regarding their concept of emotion using the interview format developed by Harris et al. (1981). The purpose of the study was to examine the asthmatic children's views on the nature and effects of happiness, anger and fear, together with strategies of self-control. The r...

Premessa [G. Chiari, M.L. Nuzzo] LA PROSPETTIVA COMPORTAMENTALE ASPETTI STORICI ED EPISTEMOLOGICI DEL COGNITIVISMO E DELLA TERAPIA COGNITIVA LA PROSPETTIVA COGNITIVO-COMPORTAMENTALE: Analisi e strategie d'intervento nella pratica psicoterapeutica

The aim of this study is to use biofeedback techniques in combination with systematic desensitization in the treatment of generalized phobias with high anxiety, such as agoraphobia. We state the advantages accruing from the combination of these two techniques. Four clinical cases of agoraphobia are presented, in each of which some of the above-ment...

After analysing the works concerning clinical applications of the EMG-feedback training in psychiatry and in chronic anxiety in particular, the author points out the purposes of this work: evaluation of the real clinical validity of this treatment in the therapy of chronic anxiety; clarification of the indication to this treatment on the ground of...

Topics addressed include: constructive alternativism and the knowledge–reality relation; anticipation, self-organisation, and structural determinism; constructs, systems, and complementarity; identity, sociality, and the mind–body problem; acceptance, orthogonal interaction, and the psychotherapeutic relationship; and person-as-scientist and the na...