Just what is a construct?

JUST WHAT IS A CONSTRUCT? [09.05.98]

To answer several queries made to me on the net regarding just what Kelly meant by the term 'construct' here are eight illustrative definitions. Most of the quotes are from Kelly's work edited by Maher in 1969.

Vincent Kenny

A CONSTRUCT IS NOT A REPRESENTATION

A CONSTRUCT IS DISTINCTION

A CONSTRUCT IS SUBJECTIVITY IN ACTION

A CONSTRUCT IS SIMILARITY - DIFFERENCE COMPLEMENTARITY

A CONSTRUCT IS SEPARATING & LINKING

A CONSTRUCT IS NOT 'COGNITION'

A CONSTRUCT IS NEITHER COGNITIVE, CONATIVE NOR AFFECTIVE

A CONSTRUCT IS HOW WE DEAL WITH OUR WORLD

A CONSTRUCT IS NOT A REPRESENTATION

A construct is not a facsimile of any set of events; only one of an ad hoc system of guidelines for apprehending events. It is hardly appropriate then to argue about whether or not a construct is true to reality. A more appropriate question is whether or not it provides a perspective in which anticipations can be checked against realizations.....does a construct or system of constructs open up the vastness of a man's psychological space and permit him to dream in new dimensions ? And does it provide such definition within its realm that he can implement what he imagines ?

A CONSTRUCT IS DISTINCTION

A construct is the basic contrast between two groups. When it is imposed it serves both to distinguish between elements and to group them. Thus the construct refers to the nature of the distinction one attempts to make between events, not to the array in which his events appear to stand when he gets through applying the distinction between each of them and all the others.

A CONSTRUCT IS SUBJECTIVITY IN ACTION

Now note something else. We have really had to fall back on our philosophical position of constructive alternativism in order to come up with this kind of an abstraction. If we had not first disabused ourselves of the idea that events are the source of our construct, we would have had a hard time coming around to the point where we could envision the underlying basis of discrimination and association we call the construct.

A CONSTRUCT IS SIMILARITY - DIFFERENCE COMPLEMENTARITY

...The personal construct abstracts similarity and difference simultaneously. One cannot be abstracted without implying the other...… ... the baseline from which we may proceed to erect either categories or continua and upon which we are free to project any behavior in our effort to understand it, may be regarded as essentially a dichotomous differentiating and integrating unit - the personal construct.

Each of our dichotomies has both a differentiating and an integrating function. ...it is the generalized form of the differentiating and integrating act by which man intervenes in his world. By such an act he interposes a difference between incidents - incidents that would otherwise be imperceptible to him because they are infinitely homogeneous. But also, by such an intervening act, he ascribes integrity to incidents that are otherwise imperceptible because they are infinitesimally fragmented.

A CONSTRUCT IS SEPARATING & LINKING

When a person makes a distinction between two objects he does not assign one of them to a restricted class and relegate the other to a wastepaper basket containing everything else in the universe. Instead he deals significantly and somewhat locally with both objects.

So in making distinctions whether between external objects or internal experiences, two functions are served simultaneously. Objects within one's field of attention are separated and linked to other objects. ...this is accomplished by the same psychological act not by two separate or successive acts. The very same process that sets one's experiences apart also puts them together in different ways. It is impossible to do one without accomplishing the other. This is a key to understanding basic psychological processes in man.

A CONSTRUCT IS NOT 'COGNITION'

Now what I am describing is not conceptualization as psychologists and logicians commonly understand that notion. It may not even be very good logic. But it is descriptive of the way man starts to make sense out of his blooming buzzing confusion. Instead of trying to classify this particular process loosely as one of 'conception' or 'cognition' let us abandon these formalistic notions altogether and designate it as the psychological process of construing or of forming personal constructs. And I must insist that the elemental construct I am postulating bears little resemblance to a concept and that construing is a far cry from cognition.

A CONSTRUCT IS NEITHER COGNITIVE, CONATIVE NOR AFFECTIVE

For the present we do not need to ask how man performs this intervening act - whether with his brain, his stomach, or his glands. Nor do we need to concern ourselves just yet with the essence of the act - whether it is cognitive, conative or affective. Finally we need not agree on what kind of substance fills the psychological space we have structured - whether the space is stuffed with physiological things social things, or mental things.

A CONSTRUCT IS HOW WE DEAL WITH OUR WORLD

Personal constructs are not abstractions that float around in thin air. They represent the ways we deal with things. If there were no elements to which the constructs were ever applied there would be no constructs. The constructs of the individual man have to be understood both by his intentions and by his extensions.