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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences pp 1–4Cite as

Personal Construct Theory

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Synonyms

Personal construct psychology; Role theory

Definition

Personal construct theory is a theory of personality which starts from the assumption that people interpret their experience of the world and themselves.

Introduction

Personal construct theory (PCT) is the invention of an American psychologist, George A. Kelly (1905–1967). Presented in 1955 in a work in two volumes, The Psychology of Personal Constructs, PCT is a theory of personality mainly devoted to clinical diagnosis and psychotherapy.

Soon after their publication, Kelly’s ideas aroused puzzlement, incomprehension, and misunderstanding in the psychological community, due to their being radically different from the perspectives of the period – psychoanalysis and behaviorism above all. Such originality of PCT has been explained by Kelly’s own “pioneering” biography (Fransella 1995) and had three main consequences: the difficulty to classify PCT into the traditional schools of psychology (it has been considered each time...

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References

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  • Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs (Vol. 2). New York: Norton.

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  • Kelly, G. A. (1970). A brief introduction to personal construct theory. In D. Bannister (Ed.), Perspectives in personal construct theory (pp. 1–29). London: Academic Press. (Original work written 1966).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CESIPc, School of Specialization in Constructivist Psychotherapy, Via Cavour, 64, 50129, Florence, Italy

    Gabriele Chiari

Authors
  1. Gabriele Chiari
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Correspondence to Gabriele Chiari .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

    Charlie Reeve

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© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

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Chiari, G. (2017). Personal Construct Theory. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_988-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_988-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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