Developments in Personal and Relational Construct Psychology: Qualitative Grids and the Levels of Interpersonal Construing

Abstract

The Social Constructionist Critique of Personal Construct Psychology In the seemingly endless debate between Constructivism and Constructionism, which can be traced back to the formation of psychology and sociology as separate disciplines in the late 19 th century, the Personal Construct Psychology of George Kelly has been characterised as "privileging the individual construer" (Stam, 1998, p 199) and "remaining lodged within the tradition of Western individualism, with knowledge claims traced primarily to intrinsic processes within the individual" (Gergen, 2004, p 68). In its turn, social constructionism can lead to a limited view of the role and experience of the individual. Gergen (1990) talks about us individuals as "relational nuclei" and Shotter (2005) as "points of condensation" in a sea of living interactions. In an early paper (Procter and Parry, 1978), Glenys Parry and I had also critiqued Kelly for his individualism and his inadequate treatment of language and culture but I believed and still believe that Kelly's psychology with his radical view of the person has a significant contribution to make and that "his theory is not restricted to the intrapsychic, it has simply not yet been elaborated in the area of multiperson relationships" (Procter, 1981). Indeed John Shotter himself, in a retrospective consideration of Personal Construct Psychology wrote: We can find in George Kelly's early ideas much of what later appeared under the umbrella of what came to be called 'social constructionism'...There are still undeveloped themes in Kelly's work that...can help us to understand inadequacies in current versions of social constructionism... Indeed, I think we can find in those early ideas many tendencies that – if they had been followed – would have led social constructionism (or at least some of its more linguistically oriented versions) away from some of the difficulties it has got itself into (Shotter, 2007, p68, p 74). Unfortunately, the standoff between the individual and social approaches and between constructivism and constructionism can obscure the range and subtlety of developments within each tradition and prevent creative collaboration between them. Ironically, they perpetuate an unsatisfactory situation where each group's separate identity is shored up partly in a process of "validation by contrast" (Neimeyer and Neimeyer, 1985a). But each approach continues to thrive in the evolutionary struggle to survive (Raskin, 2008) which to me indicates the fundamental validity and usefulness of both. I hope to show in this paper the continuing fruitfulness of taking an integrative stance and developing our understanding through a cross-fertilisation of constructivist and constructionist approaches.

Full text

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Developments in Personal and Relational Construct Psychology: Qualitative Grids and the
Levels of Interpersonal Construing
Harry Procter 2012
The Social Constructionist Critique of Personal Construct Psychology
In the seemingly endless debate between Constructivism and Constructionism, which can be traced
back to the formation of psychology and sociology as separate disciplines in the late 19th century, the
Personal Construct Psychology of George Kelly has been characterised as “privileging the individual
construer” (Stam, 1998, p 199) and “remaining lodged within the tradition of Western individualism,
with knowledge claims traced primarily to intrinsic processes within the individual” (Gergen, 2004, p
68). In its turn, social constructionism can lead to a limited view of the role and experience of the
individual. Gergen (1990) talks about us individuals as “relational nuclei” and Shotter (2005) as
“points of condensation” in a sea of living interactions.
In an early paper (Procter and Parry, 1978), Glenys Parry and I had also critiqued Kelly for his
individualism and his inadequate treatment of language and culture but I believed and still believe that
Kelly’s psychology with his radical view of the person has a significant contribution to make and that
“his theory is not restricted to the intrapsychic, it has simply not yet been elaborated in the area of
multiperson relationships” (Procter, 1981). Indeed John Shotter himself, in a retrospective
consideration of Personal Construct Psychology wrote:
We can find in George Kelly’s early ideas much of what later appeared under the umbrella of
what came to be called ‘social constructionism’...There are still undeveloped themes in
Kelly’s work that...can help us to understand inadequacies in current versions of social
constructionism... Indeed, I think we can find in those early ideas many tendencies that – if
they had been followed – would have led social constructionism (or at least some of its more
linguistically oriented versions) away from some of the difficulties it has got itself into
(Shotter, 2007, p68, p 74).
Unfortunately, the standoff between the individual and social approaches and between constructivism
and constructionism can obscure the range and subtlety of developments within each tradition and
prevent creative collaboration between them. Ironically, they perpetuate an unsatisfactory situation
where each group’s separate identity is shored up partly in a process of “validation by contrast”
(Neimeyer and Neimeyer, 1985a). But each approach continues to thrive in the evolutionary struggle
to survive (Raskin, 2008) which to me indicates the fundamental validity and usefulness of both. I
hope to show in this paper the continuing fruitfulness of taking an integrative stance and developing
our understanding through a cross-fertilisation of constructivist and constructionist approaches.

2
I have been applying this essentially dialectical method from the beginning in my work on this
project. This involves using the reciprocal criticism between two approaches to make creative
innovations and elaborations. I was sure that Kelly’s vision of the person would fit in well with, and
supplement, the revolutionary systemic, interactional, cybernetic approaches that were being
developed to study the family (Bateson et al 1956, Laing and Esterson, 1964, Watzlawick et al 1968)
and that PCP methods could be useful in research and therapy with families. Also, within sociology,
the work of the symbolic interactionists (Blumer, 1969, Rose, 1962, Goffman, 1959) were a
significant influence on my thinking.
The Social Elaboration of Personal Construct Psychology
There is in fact quite a lot of writing within the PCP literature elaborating the social and relational
side but it has tended to be overlooked by scholars critiquing PCP perhaps because some of it is
contained in conference books and collections of edited papers. I refer particularly to the early work
on development of construing in the child (O’Reilly, 1977, Salmon, 1979, Jackson and Bannister,
1985), on relationships and communication (Duck, 1979, Tschudi and Rommetveit, 1982, Neimeyer
and Neimeyer, 1985a, 1985b, Leitner, 1985, Applegate, 1990, Feixas, 1995) and various books of
papers (Stringer and Bannister, 1979, Kalekin-Fishman and Walker, 1996, Scheer, 2000 and Chiari
and Nuzzo, 2003). Stojnov and Butt (2002) in arguing for a relational basis for PCP reiterate the vital
point that the construing that governs conversational interaction is usually and largely prereflective. It
is a common misunderstanding of Kelly that construing necessarily involves conscious and deliberate
choices. As Colapietro (2006) argues, “even our most spontaneous acts of seemingly ‘immediate’
recognition, assertion and evaluation involve unsuspected processes of mediation (cited in Raggatt,
2010).
The idea that construing the world in a certain way constitutes a position in a relationship,
conversation or an interaction with another way of construing, has been elaborated in two main ways,
which are not mutually exclusive. In my own work, (Procter, 1985a), I looked at how people take up
positions with and against each other in group or family situations and conceptualised this in terms of
a family construct system (see later). In another trend, people are said to be able to take up different
positions in an “internal” set of conversations and interactions with imaginary others. Miller Mair
(1977) talked about individuals as a “Community of Selves”. Hubert Hermans et al (1992) elaborate
this, talking of “I-positions” in dialogical relation, drawing on the brilliant work of the Russian
literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1984). Hermans (1996) “considers two poles of a construct as if
they were two characters involved in dialogical relationship” and within Cognitive Analytic Therapy,
Ryle has developed a similar notion which he calls “reciprocal role procedures” (Ryle and Kerr,
2002). From a different theoretical framework, this idea also links in with Davies and Harré’s (1990)
influential paper on positioning and the discursive production of selves. The origin of the dialogical

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approach in modern times can be found in the work of Charles S. Peirce with his idea that all thinking
is dialogic in form with oneself at one instant addressing a future self about to come into being
(Peirce, 1908, Procter, in preparation, Wiley, 2006).
Positioning can be seen as an elaboration of Kelly’s fragmentation corollary: that there is within the
construct system plenty of room for a person taking up contradictory or incompatible ways of
construing. This is already a deconstruction of the monolithic idea of the hierarchical construct system
in Kelly, with superordinate values at the top coordinating all the substructure beneath, which has
bothered social constructionists concerned to critique the idea of a central self (Sampson, 1989).
I have proposed that Kelly’s notion of the bipolar construct, in which the meaning of an utterance, act
or gesture is inseparable from a contrast implicitly or explicitly associated with it in a single
psychological act (Kelly, 1955, p. 51, 1962, p. 197), can be applied not only to individuals, but also to
groups, including partners in conversation, or in society where ideological constructs underlie
discourse (see Procter, 1981, 2009a). The political construct of left versus right governs literally
which side of the House in the French National Assembly the members sat, as well as having
associated with each pole a whole range of attitudes, arguments and accounts subsumed by it. Both
personal and social constructs however do not have any existence apart from a person or a group of
people recreating the meanings and distinctions at every moment in their conversations and
interactions. Some constructs will be highly ephemeral, but many are relatively enduring, i.e. they are
recreated again and again and only change their meaning more slowly within the life-cycle of an
individual or during a particular phase in the history of a group, organisation or subculture.
In terms of the individual this explains relatively enduring aspects of our personal construing, as we
go through life. In many ways, there is very little difference between how we are now and how we
were when we were much younger. This is my experience of myself and my fellow human beings. It
does not mean we are “stuck” with a trait or some other kind of “essence”, as we are clearly
potentially free to make radical changes of view, but the construct system seems to develop as a
hierarchical system, with superordinate constructs becoming more and more elaborated and “filled
in”. For example, Kenneth Gergen (who would critique such an argument) shows in his own work a
consistency and relative stability of theme and content in his writings over a long period of time,
gradually developing and elaborating. We could say that he has a core superordinate construct of
social constructionist versus individualist, which governs his practice and his writings. This is simply
a useful way of describing this common feature of human beings and the patterns of their
development. He himself states, “I am not a social constructionist...I do not regard constructionist
ideas as some kind of belief system” (Gergen, 2011: 343) but he nevertheless can be seen as making a
consistent choices to take up a particular position. Whilst recognising his important and valuable
contribution, I do not find the exclusive reliance on meaning being created in conversation sufficient

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to explain the relative consistency and predictability of people over long periods of time. The idea of a
personal construct system governed by superordinate constructs explains this well. Personal
construing is clearly heavily influenced by cultural and local social construction but each of us carves
out a unique set or collection of constructs (I am happy to say they “carve us out”) which shapes and
governs our spontaneous actions and contributions in interaction.
Kelly (1969) says, “a construct has...no existence independent of the person whose thinking it
characterises” (cited in Shotter, 2007, p. 72), to which I would add, “or the group of people whose
thinking and interaction it characterises”. A construct only “exists” when it is being applied in a
concrete situation by a particular person in a particular social context (including where the conversant
is an imagined other, as in Hermans, above). Thus, when I act, speak or feel, I will be utilising a
construct pole, the meaning of which will vary according to my construing of its meaning for my
interlocutor, the topic and the context of the shared meaning constructed in the conversation and
situation in which we are in. The other may respond with an agreement, or difference of meaning,
creating a new semantic context in which the conversation continues.
In the fraught family situations often met with in the clinic, interaction may not always be so creative
as members become “stuck” in patterns of disagreement or mutual misunderstanding. In Procter
(1985), a modified version the original idea of a systemic “loop” (e.g. Watzlawick et al, 1974) was
offered to include the construings of the interlocutors, not just their behaviours. Each person’s
construing of the other’s actions or utterances are shown in the upper level of the diagram, called the
“bowtie”, because of its shape.
Figure 1 gives an example of the bowtie drawn from a conversation in a recent edition of the Journal
of Constructivist Psychology, in which Gergen and various commentators discuss his book
“Relational Being” (2009). Sugarman and Martin offer a critique (2011, p 283), Gergen replies (p
314), they reply to him (p 321) and he puts in a final word (p 340). We can draw a bow-tie diagram to
extract the construing and contributions that each party is making as they reassert their positions in
response to the comments of the other. Each one construes the other’s assertion (diagonal arrows) and
this governs the reply they make (downward arrows). Of course, a fuller picture would be given if we
could have included the contrast poles of the constructs as well.
In a conversation, each participant is making sense of what the other is saying or doing and this
construction shapes the verbal or gestural response given, which the other in turn construes in an on-
going situation of joint action. This can get caught in a loop that becomes recursive. What we have
then is a situation in which each person is speaking or acting from the point of view of one pole in a
dichotomised social or family construct. In this example we could label each pole as humanist versus
social constructionist. This group construct serves to describe the on-going pattern that they are
enacting. It comprises interlinked processes at two levels – semantic and behavioural/linguistic.

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In my experience of working with families and other groups and organisations, it is clear that
interaction and development was structured and governed by quite a small number of family or group
Sugarman and Martin
Gergen
Construct:
Gergen seems strongly committed
to removing all traces of
individualism – he suppresses first
person experience at every turn
(p 286-7)
They place human agency above and
superior to relational being
(p 317)
Assertion:
Psychological being is ontologically
unique – it is persons not relations
who act in the world
(p 284-5)
I find myself somehow frustrated in
grasping the meaning of such phrases
(about agency and personhood)
(p 342)
Figure 3: “Bow-tie” diagram of construing between Jeff Sugarman, Jack Martin and Kenneth
Gergen
constructs (or family semantic polarities as my friend and colleague Valeria Ugazio (1998) has called
them in a similar parallel development). An example is the family construct which dominates the
interaction and tragic events of Cain and Abel in the Play by Byron (1821) described in Procter and
Procter (2008). Adam, Eve and Abel come together in mutual condemnation of Cain, who is
questioning the need to pray and indeed the very foundations of their belief in God and all the
practices and attitudes that go with this. Their interaction generates the polarity which in turn shapes
all their conversations and actions. Such a construct as religious versus sceptical and all the
implications, beliefs and narratives that become attached to it is a social construction or discourse in
the society in which the family lives. The individuals in the family take up different positions in the
family construct system that develops in this milieu and the personal construct systems of the
members evolve and are formed in a unique way as they elaborate their understandings whilst
occupying these positions and encounter the stream of experiences associated with them.
Having summarised the gist of the approach that I have been developing over the years and put this in
the context of the constructivist and constructionist theorising, I now want to look at some more
recent theoretical and practical developments in the approach which have been occupying my interest.
First, though we will consider the sociality corollary – its strengths and limitations.
The Sociality Corollary

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Kelly’s sociality corollary is a deeply heuristic formulation which has presaged much subsequent
interest and research initiatives within different areas of psychology, though often this remains
unacknowledged. As we will see, it is still open to considerable further elaboration.
Kelly’s sociality corollary occupies a central position in PCP when it comes to making sense of and
accounting for relationships. The idea that playing a role with someone involves construing the
other’s construction processes (sociality), captures the dynamics of situations from casual encounters
through to intimate relationships. The radical constructivist concept of structural coupling (Maturana,
1975) with its implications of coordination between two ultimately lonely informationally closed
systems, does not for me do justice to the range and depth of relational phenomena and experience of
human relationship. Structural coupling beautifully captures the “bow-tie” type of scenario described
above, where two parties are locked into a perpetuating pattern of coordinated interaction but without
any meaningful sociality necessarily occurring between them, only a positioned interpretation of the
other’s behaviour and utterances, without a willingness or ability to construe this in the context of the
other’s construing. “Informational closure” misses the extent to which people can develop a profound
rapport and understanding, though of course we never get to the point of directly experiencing another
person’s experience.
The English essayist, William Hazlitt was interested in how writers and actors were able to imagine
and enact a wide variety of characters so well. In an early book he critiqued the hedonist view that we
are naturally selfish creatures and wrote:
The human mind is...naturally interested in the welfare of others in the same way, and from
the same direct motives by which we are impelled to the pursuit of our own interest...The
imagination, by means of which alone I can anticipate future objects...must carry me out of
myself into the feelings of others (Hazlitt, 1805).
The origins of the sociality corollary can be found in George Herbert Mead’s concept of role-taking:
In so far then as the individual takes the attitude of another toward himself, and in some sense
arouses in himself the tendency to the action, which his conduct calls out in the other
individual, he will have indicated to himself the meaning of the gesture... We must indicate to
ourselves not only the object but also the readiness to respond in certain ways to the object,
and this indication must be made in the attitude or role of the other individual to whom it is
pointed out or to whom it may be pointed out (Mead, 1922).
Mead’s work led to the symbolic interactionist concept of role (Butt, 2005) which developed in
contrast to the mainstream sociological concept of roles as a prescribed and rule following patterns of
behaviour associated with certain statuses or positions in the structure of society (Linton, 1936). This
approach can also clearly be found in the work of Goffman (1959) with the idea that we manage the
impression in “presenting ourselves” to an audience. More recently, in Conversational Analysis,
Harvey Sacks’ (1992) concept of subversion refers to the way talk and other social actions are
designed with regard to how they will be received and responded to (Edwards, 1997).

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But PCP moved towards a richer position here with its concern with meaningful understanding and
connection in the therapy situation and this is no clearer than in the work of Larry Leitner. The
phrasing of the sociality corollary avoids the implication of the “accuracy” (Kelly, 1966) of our
construction of the other’s construction processes implied in the usual meaning of ideas such as
“empathy” or “compassion”. This would take us outside the requirements of constructivism, with a
direct perception of another’s experience somehow being possible. And yet Leitner (1985) shows in
his discussion of the development of our most meaningful and intimate relationships how these very
qualities of empathy and deep connection are achieved, and indeed are a vital and crucial part of life
and transformation in therapy. The hazard here is that investing in these ‘ROLE’ relationships is risky
and painful as their loss or disruption can lead to pain and terror. A person may therefore retreat from
allowing such relationships to develop (Leitner and Thomas, 2003).
Sociality in Kelly’s terms is a key tool in all forms of therapy, consultation and negotiation (Frances,
2008) and failure to construe another’s position underlies difficulties in therapy, or any other areas of
human cooperation (Tschudi and Rommetveit, 1982, Robbins, 2009). I identified encouraging
sociality and mutual understanding as a key curative factor and technique in effective family therapy
(Procter, 2005). The method of internalised other interviewing (Epston, 1993, Tomm et al, 1998), in
which a person is questioned in the role of another family member, clearly involves the utilisation of
sociality in Kelly’s terms. It is central in the business of supervision and formulation (Winter and
Procter, 2012) and applying the corollary to construction of one’s own construction process is the
essence of reflective practice (Procter, 2009b). The sociality corollary crops up in new incarnations in
what has been called Theory of Mind (Baron-Cohen, 1997, Procter, 2001) and Mentalization
(Bateman and Fonagy, 2012) with impressive research programs identifying difficulties in sociality as
underlying a wide variety of areas of human difficulty, elaborating its developmental and
neuropsychological correlates and presenting a new array of therapeutic approaches, unfortunately
with no reference to Kelly or the PCP literature.
The sociality corollary underlies the whole spirit of the way Kelly advises us to approach our clients
and subjects – the credulous approach, seeing the world from the client’s point of view, acceptance
and support. This leads us into the area of ethics, to find not just how we do behave but how we
should. Stojnov sees the sociality corollary as the most important of a number of aspects of PCP in
forming the basis of a constructivist ethics (Stojnov, 1996, Butt, 2000). Similarly Allen (2008) argues
that, “mentalizing is not just a skill, it is a virtue” (cited in Bateman and Fonagy, 2012). Butt argues
that, “our best hope of changing ourselves is taking on the perspective of others. We act morally when
we seek to understand human action, either our own or others”. Stojnov sees the corollary as
underlying the imperative that we engage in moral dialogue with an exploration of mutual positions.
We must again of course reassert that ethical action does not necessarily involve conscious reasoning
or deliberation. Giliberto et al (1996) discuss the instance of a nurse persuading Gilberto’s daughter to

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drink when she was very ill – the nurse wasn’t looking for praise, she just did what had to be done,
“you just do it”, as opposed to following rules or laws. This could be linked with the idea that
sociality and construing are embodied: “we act before we know we have done” Butt (1996). Similar
thinking is being brought into the social constructionist literature by Shotter: “we have developed in
the course of all our previous living involvements...an embodied capacity to respond, immediately and
spontaneously...in a flexible, contexted manner (2010, p. 80).
The Relationality Corollary: critique and elaboration of the Sociality Corollary
We can see then that the Sociality Corollary, and its various adaptations, is a brilliant and central idea
in understanding human relationships but it must be critiqued in that it is only really good for
construing social processes in terms of relating to one other person or position. In doctoral research
(Procter, 1978) in which I was examining interpersonal construing in family situations, I concluded
that we need another corollary, an elaboration and extension of the sociality corollary to deal with the
complexities of multiperson interaction. If the person as scientist is busy in social situations making
sense of another person’s actions and constructions then, when present with more than one person, he
or she must make sense not just of each of the others’ constructions and actions, but the relationships
and interactions between these others as well. Thus the Relationality Corollary (originally titled the
Group Corollary) states that, ‘To the extent that a person can construe the relationships between the
members of a group, he or she may take part in a group process with them’ (Procter, 1978, 1981).
This corollary is absolutely central in the process of the socialisation and development of human
beings as persons.
The construing involved in relating to one other person is considerably challenged when one is
confronted by the situation of relating to two other people simultaneously. A whole new arena of
phenomena is involved and a wider range of conversational options opens up. Many people find that
they can relate comfortably and confidently to each of their friends on a one-to-one basis, but in a
situation where those friends are together, it does not always “work” in the same way. In the family
context, a child may relate very satisfactorily with each of two parents, but if these parents begin to
fight, the child becomes highly anxious and upset. A parent learns to deal with having one child very
satisfactorily, but then learning to manage the new scenario of a second child entering the scene, with
all the new emotions and interactions between siblings that can occur is an entirely different ball
game. In situations of a child with autistic type difficulties, where sociality and relationality are core
difficulties, it is common to observe that the child can be happy in the classroom situation where the
primary task is relating to the teacher around specific tasks with peer interaction controlled and
minimised, compared to times of free interaction in the playground or the dinner queue where severe
challenging behaviour may erupt as a result of difficulties in understanding and managing the
complex, confusing, situations with which they are confronted (Procter, 2001, Sainsbury, 2000).

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What differences are involved here? In dealing with two people at once one is confronted by the wide
range of relational or interactional phenomena occurring between those two, all the signals and signs
in several different sensory modalities, the expressions and voice tones, the conversational gambits,
the hierarchies, sharing, understandings and misunderstandings, the conflicts, humour, put-downs –
construing these is an essential part of learning how to respond to and manage one’s own reactions in
relation to these in an on-going flow of rapid turn taking. The sheer amount of information involved is
multiplied a hundred fold, and much of this is of a different logical type to what is involved in a one-
to-one situation. The constructs involved in relating to individuals, for example, warm versus cold or
interested versus preoccupied are of a different type to those needed for construing relationships with
more than one person – for example, close versus distant or agreeing versus disagreeing. Logical type
theory (Whitehead and Russell, 1910), which states that no class can contain itself as a member, is
useful here in clarifying the difference between these levels. It shows that nonsense or paradox arises
when a member is confused with the class of which it is the member.
The difference or shift from construing of individuals to construing relationships in a way parallels the
turn in philosophy, psychology and sociology made through the twentieth century, from a focus on
intrapsychic models of human functioning to the development of relational or interpersonal
approaches. This shift has been pervasive and multidisciplinary. We began to see it in philosophy with
Lipps (1900), a significant influence on Freud and Husserl, with his discussion of empathy as
understanding the mental states of other people (Montag et al, 2008). Freud, of course discussed such
relational phenomena as projection, introjection and transference, whilst Husserl struggled with the
idea of intersubjectivity from 1910 onwards (Moran, 2000). In the 1920’s Martin Buber (1923)
distinguished the I – It from the I – Thou relationship and influenced Bakhtin (Clark and Holquist,
1986, cited in Honeycutt, 1994) in his development of the dialogical approach. The tradition of
psychoanalysis has become more and more relational, eschewing its biological beginnings in the work
of Fairbairn, Sullivan and many others. We have already mentioned of course symbolic
interactionism, the family systemic approach (arising out of Bateson’s anthropological work and the
comparison between symmetrical versus complementary interaction) and the various forms of social
constructionism and discourse and conversational analysis. These trends have developed a rich
professional or academic vocabulary for describing and understanding relationships. But PCP, with its
reflexivity (Procter, 2009b) has always stressed the equal importance and equivalence of the
psychologist’s construing with that of the people studied. How do people themselves, therefore, in
everyday situations, construe patterns of relationship? I am interested in opening up this question to
more systematic research. A way forward is to elaborate the relationality corollary into a series of
levels of interpersonal construing.

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The Levels of Interpersonal Construing
Figure 2 shows how we can divide up interpersonal construing into three basic levels. In the monadic
level, we are looking at construing a person in terms of them as an individual, including their physical
characteristics, their “personality”, behaviour or emotional state. Some of this could be called
“essentialist construing” (Raskin, 2011) which relationally, we would critique, but which nevertheless
occurs widely in governing people’s reactions toward one another and indeed is of vital use in
everyday situations, for example in judging a stranger to be dangerous versus safe.
The monadic level also includes construing the other individual’s constructions, views, opinions,
intentions, in other words what is covered in the sociality corollary. It is important to clarify things
here. The sociality corollary itself is an instance of dyadic construing, because it construes a situation
or process occurring between two people. Yet it refers to the monadic construing of one person about
the second. Another point is that this level includes all the construing we apply to ourselves, as we
make judgements about our own characteristics, feelings and actions and reflect on our own
construing and position, in an on-going interaction or relationship.
Figure 2: Levels of Interpersonal Construing
At the dyadic level a person is construing the relationship and interactions between two people (two
others, or self and another), making sense of their reactions to each other, the patterning of their
interaction and conversation – but also the patterning of their respective construing or positions – for
example, how much they are genuinely agreeing or differing in their views or pretending and showing
the other agreement or disagreement. Dyadic construing will generally involve construing at a
monadic level as well, but not necessarily. For example we may judge the interactions between two
people out of earshot in the street to be one of escalating conflict versus play-fighting without having
Level 1
Construing one other person (monadic)
- Behaviour, personality
- Construing (Sociality corollary)
Level 2
Construing two person relationship (dyadic)
- Interactions
- Construing
Level 3
Construing three people (triadic)
- Interactions
- Construing

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any knowledge of them as individuals or what their construing of self and other involves. This would
be an instance of pure dyadic construing, unaccompanied by construing at the other levels.
At the triadic level, constructions are being made of the relationships and interactions that occur
between three people, which again may be three others or oneself and two others. Pure triadic
construing can occur – in observing three children in the playground from the school window where,
for example, two children are baiting or excluding a third. Normally at this level though, there will be
construing occurring alongside at monadic and dyadic levels. The participants themselves may be
construing the triad at one or more the levels. In line with Kelly’s “range of convenience” we could
talk of levels of convenience. A particular level of construing is likely to be the most salient according
to the situation and task in hand. There is choice involved here which can be utilised in therapy and
intervention by steering the conversation to a level which is likely to prove more productive in terms
of facilitating change (Procter, 2005).
For logical completeness we could identify two further levels which are shown in Figure 3. Level 0
covers situations where people are not treated as individuals at all but are construed according to a
group or type to which they are seen as belonging. Salient examples of this would be seen in prejudice
where someone is construed in a situation merely by their skin-colour or religious group or in terms of
a diagnostic label. How often does one encounter a situation with psychological colleagues in which,
on mentioning that one admires an approach such as PCP, one is met with the pre-emptive construing
that we must therefore be too “cognitive”, “rationalist” or “individualist”!
Level -1
Not construing a person: behaving as if
they were not there
(disconfirmation)
Level 0
Construing a person in general terms
according to a group or type
Figure 3: Two further levels of interpersonal construing
In level -1, the person is treated as if they did not exist at all, a process of disconfirmation (Buber,
1957, Laing, 1961, Cissna and Sieburg, 1981). This is claimed as an important factor in families in
schizophrenic transaction, where a person may even apply it to themselves (auto-disconfirmation):
“I’m not really here, I don’t exist in the relationship with you” (Selvini et al, 1978). Construing a
person as an object, organism, machine or an “it” could occur either at level -1 (no sentient being
present) or at level 0 (treating a person as beneath contempt or as a scientific curiosity). The feelings
and consequences of the emotional neglect and alienation involved in being the subject of these levels
of construing are hard to put into words but may still be too common amongst the recipients of

12
services where mental states and difficulties are understood exclusively in terms of brain disorders.
The strategy of social withdrawal in order to protect oneself from further invalidation of course
compounds the problem in a vicious circle (Filip, 2012).
Understanding and clarifying these different levels helps us to be much more alert and lends precision
to what is happening in social situations and will aid us to help people deepen and modify their
construings, which of course are an integral part of the patterns of interaction and conversation
occurring in the situations that we are studying and with which we are working. It is easy to ignore or
blur the distinctions between levels and the methods we use to tease out constructs may unwittingly
only be revealing construing at one level, usually monadic. This is true, with important exceptions, of
the repertory grid technique, when we ask the subject to construe a series of elements consisting of
individuals in their lives. Another instance may be found in Applegate (1990) which seeks to link
construing and communication. A technique called the Role Category Questionnaire (Crockett, 1965)
is described in which subjects write impressions of a liked and disliked other. The example given at
the end of the paper is of a woman puzzling about why she is attracted to Bill (dyadic) but goes on in
an entirely monadic vein as she describes his habits, preferences and political beliefs. She does not
mention their interaction and repartee which may hold the clue about their mutual attraction. We must
be alert to the individualist bias in our culture which as Haley (1963, p. 3) said many years ago has far
more words to describe individuals than it does relationships, especially when it comes to describing
problems.
The origin of this way of elaborating the levels of interpersonal construing came from the work of the
family therapist Jay Haley (e.g. 1973) who suggested that we have a choice, in formulating clinical
problems, of applying a lens which can be focussed on just the symptom bearer, on that person and
one other or that person and two others. He argued that human problems are often associated with a
“perverse triangle” (1967) in which there is a coalition across hierarchical levels in a family or
organisation, leading to paradoxical communication. But the main recent inspiration lies in the work
of Valeria Ugazio and her team in Milan (1998, 2008, 2011) who introduced the notion of the triadic
semantic polarity and whose research on monadic, dyadic and triadic inferences in narratives we will
examine below.
A link can also be made to the work of the philosopher C. S. Peirce, who argued that the most basic
categories we use in apprehending the world can be identified as Firstness, Secondness, and
Thirdness. Peirce argued that his category of Thirdness, the triangle between sign, object and
interpretant, underlies all thinking, meaning, representation, intention, prediction, law and
communication (Procter, 2011a). In his ‘reduction principle’ he argues that Secondness cannot be
reduced to Firstness or Thirdness to Firstness or Secondness. But Thirdness is as high as we need to
go as higher levels of polyadicity can be explained by Thirdness (Procter, 2011a; Procter, in

13
preparation). Further research is needed to validate this claim in the context of interpersonal
construing.
Having looked at the various levels, we will now turn to how we might elicit and map out these
patterns of interpersonal construing in a wide variety of applications. This involves the use of tables
or diagrams which I have called Qualitative Grids, pencil and paper methods that can be used in
interviewing, both in clinical and research contexts, and in the analysis of transcripts, texts, films,
plays and situations of all kinds.
Examining Interpersonal Construing with Qualitative Grids
Qualitative Grids have been developed over the past few years by the writer as a flexible method of
eliciting and displaying interpersonal construing (Procter, 2002, Procter and Procter, 2008). They
arose originally as tables summarising the results of quantitative repertory grids given to different
family members in which the main constructs being applied to self and other by each of four members
were presented (Procter, 1985b, 1996). I realised then that one could ask family members to write in
the construct labels directly (or draw these from interviews). This original form I called the Perceiver
Element Grid (PEG) which has been used in various research projects, discussed below. Since then,
the method has proved extremely flexible and a number of different forms of qualitative grid have
been developed such as Event Grids, Dyad Grids and grids specially designed for use in reflective
practice and supervision (Procter, 2009b) and formulation (Winter and Procter, 2012). We are still
very much at the beginning of using these in research and I hope to stimulate readers to take this
forward as these tools prove to be powerful for understanding and intervening in social situations.
Qualitative Grids for Monadic Construing
The perceiver element grid (PEG) consists of a table examining the way in which a set of characters
construe themselves and each of the others. Figure 1 is an example drawn from Henry James’
wonderful short novel, “Washington Square” (1880). The four principal characters in the story are
placed in the left hand column as perceivers and again along the top row as elements. The arrow
makes clear the convention that we read the grid from left to right. Constructs are extracted from the
text or transcript wherever a character describes him or herself or one of the others. In clinical or
research situations these can be entered directly into a grid or the investigator can enter them after
eliciting the constructs in an interview. PEGs can be drawn up in a conjoint group or family interview
or conducted separately with each member, the data then being pooled into a single grid. Instead of
verbal descriptions, people can be asked to make drawings, as was used in an in depth study of ten
Canadian families (Giles, 2004) or in work with children (Procter, 2007, Stewart et al, 2011).
Children are used to a similar format in cartoons and their characters with thought bubbles or
captions.

14
In the story, 22-year-old Catherine, who her father sees as simple and unattractive meets and is
attracted to Morris who she sees as beautiful and wonderful. Her father, Dr Austin Sloper, a successful
doctor whose beautiful wife and first born son have died, has been left to bring Catherine up. He
thinks Morris is a sponger and only after his daughter for the family’s money. Austin’s sister Lavinia
however for her own reasons takes a fancy to Morris and defying her elder brother argues that
Catherine loves Morris. Catherine thinks her aunt is meddling and is caught between her feelings for
Morris and her loyalty to and fear of her tyrannical and ironic father.
ELEMENTS
Figure 4: Perceiver Element Grid from Henry James’ Washington Square
The PEG reveals surprisingly profound data throwing light on the core dynamics of group situations.
This goes further to show just how powerful Kelly’s sociality corollary is in the functioning of role
relationships. By reading along the rows, we get a sample of a member’s personal construing of
several people. Reading down the columns, we get a set of different views of each character. This
may be how we build up views and understandings of situations in everyday life in the polyphony of
interacting voices (Bakhtin, 1984). Even though we are here restricting ourselves to monadic
construing, a rich picture of the relational and political dynamics is revealed, including the hierarchies
and power struggles, the dominance and subjugation, and the intimacies, coalitions and conflicts
contained in human social life. The method itself invites a consideration of how each member sees all
the members in a scenario. Many narratives or interviews are not exhaustive and the grid’s cells are
only partially filled in. The gaps may reveal simply a lack of consideration so far of the roles of
PEG
Father
Lavinia
Catherine
Morris
Father
Simple
Unattractive
“Don’t think
well of Morris”
Sponger
Lavinia
Tough
Loves Morris
He is like the
husband I wish
I’d had
Catherine
Tyrant
Ironic
Meddling
Unconfident
Beautiful
Wonderful
Morris
I have changed
Confident
PERCEIVERS

15
certain members or some members’ construing may have been subjugated with their voices being
accidentally or systematically ignored (Level 0 construing).
A powerful procedure (Procter, 2007) is to give family or group members PEGs to complete in
separately, in which they enter their own construings and guess how the other members would fill
them in (sociality), and then bring them together to compare and discuss what they have written or
drawn. This can be a useful therapeutic method, enhancing sociality and allowing for a consideration
and discussion of commonalities, disagreements and (mis)understandings. In general the materiality
of qualitative grids have the advantage of reflecting the participants’ construing in a situation in a
relatively enduring manner, charting change and inviting reflection and reconsideration over longer
periods of time, or between successive sessions of a therapeutic series.
This method has been used to look at construing between boys diagnosed with ADHD and their
fathers (Stewart et al 2011) and between looked after children and their foster parents (Cooper, 2012).
A project is under way using PEGs to research families in which a member has been diagnosed with
Inherited Prion disease, a condition involving a 50:50 risk of developing a terminal dementia in the
future. Elements are family members who have (1) tested positive or (2) negative for the disease, (3)
members at risk or (4) untested as yet. The method yields the stark dilemmas and complex feelings
involved in these different predicaments which will throw light on working with and supporting these
families (Morris, in preparation).
A modified version, the Goal Perceiver Element Grid (G-PEG) was used in consulting with a
dysfunctional and conflictful therapeutic team. The six members were asked how they would all like
to be able to see self and each other after a six month period of successful resolution of their
difficulties and these were entered into a 6x6 grid (Procter, 2008). This effectively provided the team
and consultant with thirty six goals to inform their work. It was felt that asking them to record their
current interpersonal construings would be inflammatory. One can read into the goals of course
aspects of their current concerns and dissatisfactions. This formed the basis of an effective
intervention into a long-standing conflict between staff members. The PEG can also be used in which
the elements are different “selves” within one person, in order to explore the dialogical positioning
and dilemmas involved in the community of selves (Pavlović, 2011, Procter, 2011b, Stojnov and
Procter 2012).
Monadic construing can also be explored as it develops over either short periods of time (over the
course of a conversation or critical situation) or long periods of time (eras in a person’s lifetime or
period of the development and resolution of difficulties). These Event Grids could be classified as
diachronic or temporal as opposed to synchronic grids such as the PEG, which captures construing at
a single point in time, utilising the useful distinction originated by De Saussure (1916). Episodes or
periods of time are put down the left hand column. In the event element grid (EEG), elements are

16
entered along the top row and the subject puts his or her construings of them in the boxes as these
evolve over time.
Figure 5 shows a lovely example of a boy watching a fight between two wrestlers on television,
drawn from Cronen, (2004). Pearce and Cronen’s model (1981) was developed contemporaneously
with my own, with many of the same influences. Cronen (2004, p.172) though, is critical of
constructs, saying that they are “distinctively bad ideas”, which is perhaps another example of
misidentifying constructs as cognitive representations. However the influence of Kelly is clear. Their
model is permeated with his ideas including hierarchy with superordinate levels shaping action,
anticipation and the future dimension of stories, validation and invalidation by the other’s response
and the integration of action, feeling and thinking. Their method of mapping scenarios is useful and
powerful though more complex than those presented here. I have extracted details of the boy’s
construing from their diagram in order to illustrate the EEG. The boy is incensed when the “bad guy”
X sneaks up on Y and hits him over the head with a chair. But when Y successfully gets his own back,
the boy stands up and cheers – “that’s my man!” Cronen interestingly discusses this as an example of
the power of mass media in shaping a boy’s identity and construing of gender.
ELEMENTS
Figure 5: Eight-year-old boy construes two wrestlers on television (drawn from Cronen, 2004)
In another method, the event perceiver grid (EPG), perceivers are entered along the top and their
construings of self and others are put in the boxes. An example of this is shown in Figure 6 where the
constructions of Cain and Abel are detailed as the conflict escalates to Cain murdering his brother in
Byron’s play Cain: A Mystery (1821). The two brothers are already polarised along a family construct
having faith and being devout versus questioning the existence of God and being defiant. Cain is
initially compliant with Abel’s wish that they pray, preoccupied with what he has seen on his journey.
EEG
X
Y
X hits Y over the
head with a
chair
Not fair – that dirty X
snuck up on Y when he
wasn’t looking!
I wish he’d get up, he’s
hurt
Y rolls over and
takes X by the
ankles
I hate that dirty sneak
He got ‘im!
Great – my man!
This is how a man feels!
EVENTS

17
Abel is concerned that Cain has an “unnatural” look in his eyes and that he must be suffering a
“delusion”, asserting his own religious construction of Cain’s experience and disconfirming the
validity of Cain’s position. Cain has spent the earlier part of the play resisting and challenging such
constructions and now dissociates from the ceremony saying he is a tiller rather than the more
privileged role of a shepherd. He refuses to kneel to his altar. The smell of the lamb’s blood seems to
act as a trigger to Cain’s anger and, as Abel implies that he is evil, suddenly refuses to continue with
the ritual. More than that, he attacks Abel’s altar, and then, as Abel tries to protect it, grabs a burning
brand and strikes a fatal blow and kills Abel. Abel maintains his faith and forgiveness in his dying
words. This is obviously only a fictional representation but Byron manages to capture plausibly the
way in which such tragic sequences of interaction occur.
PERCEIVERS
EVENTS
EPG
Cain
Abel
1. ABELQUESTIONS CAIN ON
HIS RETURN FROM HADES
Overwhelming
things have made me
unfit for mortal
converse
Thine eyes are
flashing with
unnatural light
2. ABEL URGES PRAYER
Thou art fitter for
worship than me
As my elder I revere
thee - Thy soul
seems labouring in
some strong delusion
3. ABEL SACRIFICES A LAMB
I have not flocks, I
am a tiller of the
ground
Behold a shepherd’s
humble offering
4. ABEL’S OFFERING REEKS
OF BLOOD
I won’t kneel
God made us –
without him we are
evil
5. CAIN ATTACKS ABEL’S
ALTAR
I will build no more
altars nor suffer any
Add not impious
words to impious
works
6. ABEL DEFENDS HIS ALTAR.
CAIN TURNS ON ABEL AND
STRIKES HIM WITH A
BURNING BRAND
Thy god loves blood
If thy lovst thyself
stand back
I love God far more
than life
7. ABEL DIES
I am thy murderer
Forgive this slayer
for he knew not what
he did
Figure 6: Event Perceiver Grid (EPG) traces the conflict escalating to murder (Simplified from
Procter and Procter, 2008)

18
Qualitative Grids for Dyadic Construing
The vital nature of dyadic construing is illustrated in Gregory Bateson’s (1955) descriptions of
monkeys at play in San Francisco zoo which led to “an almost total revision of his thinking”.
Watching them pretend to fight led him to speculate that monkeys and other animals are capable of
metacommunicating a message that “this is play”. This led to his emphasis on the “definition of the
relationship” and to state that any message contains two levels, a content level and a relationship
level. The latter is nearly always totally implicit and outside of our awareness and yet plays a vital
role in regulating our relationships at all times.
We can design qualitative grids to capture this dyadic construing or definition of the relationship in
various ways. In the Washington Square example, we could supplement the elements in figure 4 with
the six possible dyads – Father/Lavinia, Father/Catherine and so on and ask the protagonists to
summarise how each sees the relationship in general (a perceiver dyad grid). This reveals interesting
information when used with a family or group. But we may wish to specify a situation or context or
even a particular moment in a conversation or piece of interaction and get the participants to specify
how they construe each pairing, for example in playing back a sample of video to a group. There are
many variations and the important thing with qualitative grids is to design the form around the
questions one wants to ask. In therapy this may involve improvising and designing a grid “on the fly”
as a new question comes up at a point in the session. A sequence of such moments could be entered
into an event dyad grid (EDG) analogous to the monadic grid presented in figure 6.
Figure 7 presents the poignant situation drawn from two songs by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. They
may or may not have had a fling in the early sixties but the urban myth is that Dylan’s song “It ain’t
me babe” (1964) was written about Baez. It seems clearer that Joan’s song “Diamonds and Rust”,
written in 1974, is about Bob. The grid in this case includes two elements, the dyad as seen by Bob
and as seen by Joan. Each has something to say about each one’s definition of the relationship.
(Because each of their views are spaced ten or more years apart, this grid is also classifiable as an
event or diachronic grid). Bob’s song seems to be saying that the relationship won’t and can’t work
because she has traditional expectations of a life-long exclusive commitment. Ten years later her
feelings are re-invoked when “he happens to call”. She sees him as having randomly “strayed into her
arms” and as having “kept things vague”. She seems to confirm that his view of what she wanted was
true.
What sort of constructs are involved in dyadic construing? Leary (1958) claimed that types of social
relationships can be summarised by just two factors – love versus hate and dominance versus
submission. Schutz’s (1958) first two dimensions were similar to Leary’s (affection/openness,
control) but he added a third, inclusion/exclusion which is triadic. We can answer the question well by

19
looking at the excellent work using numerical dyad grids by Ryle who went on to develop cognitive
analytic therapy. In these grids, he used dyads as elements in looking at the construing of individuals
Figure 7: Perceiver dyad grid (PDG) of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, from “It ain’t me Babe (Dylan,
1964) and “Diamonds and Rust” (Baez, 1974)
Behaviour towards
Feeling towards
Looks after
Is forgiving to
Controls
Is dependent on
Blames
Gives in to
Confuses
Tries to get through to
Ignores
Respects
Feels frustrated with
Feels hurt by
Sexually attracted to
Scared of
Feels critical of
Is loving to
Is hostile to
Feels understanding for
Figure 8: Dyadic constructs used by Anthony Ryle
PDG
Bob’s definition of their
relationship
Joan’s definition of their
relationship
1964
Go away
I’m not the one you want or
need
Go lightly
Melt back into the night
I will only let you down
You say you’re looking for
someone:
Never weak but always strong
To protect you and defend you
To open each and every door
To promise never to part
To close his eyes and heart
To die for you
Pick you up each time you fall
Come each time you call
A lover for life and nothing more
1974
You happened to call
because the moon was full
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
temporarily lost at sea
You are so good at keeping
things vague
The Madonna was yours for free
The girl on the half-shell could
keep you unharmed
I once loved you dearly
I’ve already paid

20
with sexual and relationship difficulties (Ryle and Lunghi, 1970) and for comparing ‘adjusted’ versus
with ‘maladjusted’ couples in their construing of various dyads in the family (Ryle and Breen, 1972).
Ryle and Lipschitz (1981) looked at change over the course of marital therapy in a grid which could
be classified as an event dyad grid as they construed their relationship using two elements each
session, him to her and her to him. Some constructs drawn from this work are shown in Figure 8. This
work formed the basis for the later development of the concept of reciprocal role procedures (Ryle
and Kerr, 2002) referred to earlier.
Ryle’s dyadic constructs contain the idea of directionality and are classified into behaviour towards
and feelings toward the other. Kalekin-Fishman (2000) in her personal construct conversational
analysis of examples of “plain talk” found that 55% of the relational constructs used were about
action. Ugazio et al (2008) studied monadic, dyadic and triadic causal attributions made in a semantic
analysis of self-narratives. They divided the dyadic into unidirectional (protagonist in an active
deciding role, or passive – “she was forced to take up medicine by her father”) and bidirectional (they
both decided to keep the baby). We may wish therefore to include the two elements for each dyad, A
to B and B to A in constructing qualitative dyad grids. There is no formal research project utilising
qualitative dyad grids yet, but the field is ripe for such development.
Qualitative Grids for Triadic Construing
Little work has gone into examining triadic construing with qualitative grids but the possibility seems
promising and intriguing. We could potentially construct perceiver triad grids and event triad grids
either focusing on one particular triad or examining a number of different triads in a group. We could
even include dyads in the left hand column as perceivers, in which two people are asked to negotiate
and record their similarities and differences in construing of how a triad operates.
A nice example of triadic construing can be found in a case of the sudden recovery from catatonic
schizophrenia reported by the author (Procter, 1987, p. 162). Peter had been demanding that his
elderly mother wait on him and this could escalate to violence and threats of murder if she was
reluctant. His sister Ruth gives the example of him cleaning shoes. She can get him to clean his own
shoes but normally he demands that his mother do it. She construes the triad in her statement, “Yeh,
but if I wasn’t there she’d go on and do it for him” (see figure 9). This had resulted in her and her
husband constantly having to go over and resolve conflicts in the parental home. The lack of
resolution of this dilemma had escalated to a crisis culminating in his enforced admission to the
psychiatric hospital and his developing a mute catatonic state. Peter suddenly started talking,
participating in family life and getting on with various jobs round the house after the fourth family
therapy session.

21
This example reminds us of the importance placed on triads in the formulation of problems in the
family therapy context. Starting from Freud’s oedipal situation, through Haley’s “perverse triangle”
and various other family therapists including Weakland, Bowen, Zuk, Minuchin and Ugazio,
emphasis has been placed on “triangulation” and such triadic constructs as rivalry, jealousy,
exclusion, scapegoating, favouritism, mediation and coalition. Ugazio (1998) critiques Bateson’s
dyadic concepts of symmetrical and complimentary schismogenesis arguing that these processes need
supplementing with the new concepts of specularity and implogenesis. These emphasise how, faced
with polarisation between two others, a person may elaborate a central position of weighing and
balancing (specularity) and mediating (implogenesis) as shown in the example of Ruth and her
brother and mother above.
ELEMENTS
Figure 9. Dyadic and Triadic Construing in Peter’s family
More generally, triadic construing must be pervasive in our interactions and experiences but we are
only beginning to come to grips with how much this is the case. In literary theory a triangle is set up
between author, text and reader and this of course is intrinsic to all communication. For clinicians, the
process of supervision is so fundamentally a triadic process, as the supervisor listens to the story and,
taking the part simultaneously of client and therapist, considers the best way to facilitate the best way
forward.
But how common is this triadic construing? In an ingenious study, Ugazio et al (2008) asked 400 arts
and science students to tell an explanatory story about “why a first class medical student dropped out
with just five exams to go before graduating”. This stimulus situation was supplemented with a
context provided at four levels – none (monadic), she tells her mother who cries (dyadic), her mother
cries and her father consoles mother (triadic), her mother cries and her father seems pleased (an
enigmatic triadic situation involving contradictory behaviours). Each of these was given to gender
Mother/Peter
Ruth/Peter
Mother/Ruth/
Peter
Mother
He sort of caught me
hold of the throat and
was going to murder
me
Ruth
She waits on him too
much
I’d say, “now there’s
your shoes, peter, you
do it, you clean
them”. And he’d do it
If I wasn’t there she’d
go and do it for him
PERCEIVERS

22
balanced groups of 100 students. The resulting narratives were coded using the 1 to 3 system
developed by the writers into monadic, dyadic and triadic causal explanations.
Arts students provided more triadic and less monadic explanations than those studying science. There
was an increased incidence of dyadic and triadic explanations when the students were presented with
stimulus contexts containing more actors. But the results seem to suggest that triadic explanations are
not at all common – 3.0% where three people were mentioned and only 1.7% where the three actors
were linked together in the narrative in a circular or systemic gestalt. However, as Ugazio et al (2012)
discuss, there is likely to be a significant difference between explicit relational knowledge as tapped
in constructing the stories and the implicit construing involved in participating in lived triadic
situations. The former is likely to be greatly influenced by the mostly monadic narrative conventions
in a culture where, for example psychiatric, neurological and cognitive behavioural discourses still
prevail. Ugazio et al cite Fivaz-Depeursinge and Corboz-Warnery (1999) who report that infants of
three months already gaze alternately at their parents and at nine months all children perform complex
triadic interactions. It is difficult to imagine that the rivalrous complaints of a child who says “it’s not
fair” are not an example of construing at a triadic level. This may serve as a warning that too much
reliance on narrative as the basic datum in therapy may be missing whole strata of vital construing in
a person’s situation. These fascinating questions remain to be opened up in further research.
Qualitative grids focussing on construing at a particular “level of convenience” or using elements
building up across levels from individuals to dyads and triads are likely to contribute to this.
Discussion
We have now come to the end of our presentation of theoretical and methodological developments
toward a fully relational personal construct psychology. I believe we find that nearly sixty years after
Kelly’s original magnum opus that PCP is alive and well and as capable as ever of contributing to
research and clinical practice. We can see that there is an underlying construct flowing through the
human sciences which governed the separation of the disciplines of psychology and sociology and has
continued to polarise scholars and clinicians to this day. At the extremes we have the radical
constructivist view, based in biology and the cognitive approach, where experience and functioning
are structurally determined primarily at an individual level. At the other end we have social
constructionist views where the language, traditions and discourses of society are given primacy, the
individual being cast adrift in a sea of conversations and interactions. Relational Personal Construct
Psychology is in the middle ground, able to appreciate and respect both these traditions as having
viability and validity and capable of subsuming concepts and research findings deriving from
traditions across the whole range of the dimension.
PCP has become highly developed as an approach to how the individual, social and relational are
interfused and this needs to be acknowledged by those who critique the approach on the basis of

23
Kelly’s original writings alone. These writings must be understood within the context of the
psychology of the decades when Kelly was writing and developing the approach. It is easy to forget
how revolutionary his work was in its struggle against the paradigms of the time.
The core of Kelly’s contribution which still distinguishes it from all the other approaches that we have
discussed is the dialectical nature of meaning contained in his notion of the construct. The meaning of
any idea or act is fully dependent on what contrast or distinction is being made. It is absurd to forget
this. To separate the poles and privilege one of them over the other, for example in saying that the
individual is more important than the social or vice versa. This distinction itself is only the creation of
human minds, convenient as it is for proceeding and making sense of life at various levels and
contexts. As Hegel (1968) said in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the one and the many,
the whole and the parts, the particular and the general and the subjective and the objective are an
inseparable unity of opposites, in a very profound sense, for example, the one is the many, the many
are one. Society is ultimately made up of individuals. The individual is a society or community of
selves or positions.
Furthermore, this notion of the construct acts as a crucial bridge in looking at the individual and
society. Language and discourse consist of thousands of constructs held in common by everyone, but
continuously evolving and adapting as history proceeds. The individual consists of a bundle of
constructs, selected, revised and developed in the light of his or her context, unique experiences and
biography. Society provides all the building blocks of individual construction and processing, but
individuals, all of us, feed, develop and replenish the language, traditions and social understandings of
the era in which we live.
The development and critique of Kelly’s sociality corollary and its elaboration through the
relationality corollary, reported in this paper, emphasises how each one of us is, and has to be,
constantly making sense of this relational and social dialectic at the local level of our struggle to live
together. Jelena Pavlović (2011), in recently claiming that PCP and Social Constructionism are not
incompatible, has argued that we can extend, or even replace Kelly’s model of the person as scientist,
with the person-as-discourse-analyst. I like that idea. It captures the spirit also of what John Shotter
(in preparation) has been saying about how we have to find our way at every step of our lives, in order
to discover at every moment how we “go on” in the immediate situation.
Qualitative Grids as a set of methods have grown out of the elaboration of a relational personal
construct psychology that has absorbed my interest over several decades. They have an elegance,
simplicity and flexibility that satisfy me at an aesthetic level. But more importantly, they are proving
useful in many different ways, summarized in figure 10. But they do not need to be used just within
construct theory or constructivism. I hope they can now “grow up” and “leave home” for they can be
used within any approach to the understanding or amelioration of human affairs.

24
• Map interpersonal construing in families, groups,
organisations
• Examine change over time, historically and during
intervention
• Therapeutic intervention in itself
• Promoting interpersonal understanding and problem
solving
• Tools for Formulation, Supervision and Reflective
Practice
• Research into specific areas
• Study plays, films, novels and other texts
Figure 10: The uses and applications of Qualitative Grids
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Trevor Butt, Richard Casebow, Miroslav Filip, Mary Francis, Clare Morris, Bernadette
O’Sullivan, Jelena Pavlović, Jane Procter, Sigurd Reimers, Dusan Stojnov and Valeria Ugazio for their
invaluable comments and suggestions about the manuscript.
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