Contrasts and synergies: A comment on Jones (2022)

Abstract

In response to Jones’s (2022) article, we argue that if we understand personal construct psychology as being less rationalistic and more holistic than is often assumed, important synergies between it and Jungian analytical psychology can be observed. We argue that the two theories can be considered to align with each other on a number of points. These include taking a similar epistemological position, a recognition of psychological processes operating outside of immediate awareness, and the implications that these can have for personal change. We argue for a more “social” understanding of personal construct psychology than Jones allows for, and further suggest that possibilities for its alignment with social constructionism should not be understated. We conclude that both theories deserve greater visibility in the world of academic psychology, and argue for greater consideration of their potential use in research.

Jones’s (2022) article, “Thinking in Opposites: The Psychologies of Carl Gustav Jung and George Kelly,” presents a comparison of Jung’s analytic psychology and Kelly’s personal construct psychology (PCP). Jones identifies both differences and similarities between the two theories and makes a strong case for the value of considering each in the light of the other. In this commentary, we will outline what we see as some of Jones’s mis-readings of PCP but also identify further grounds upon which the two theories may be regarded as having much in common.

Our own intellectual and research backgrounds are broadly constructivist in orientation, and include specific experience with PCP (both authors) and (to a lesser extent) with Jungian theory (Nigel King). We will begin by looking at the epistemological stance taken by Jung and Kelly before going on to discuss some of the issues raised by Jones’s (2022) article, specifically: constructs and construing, the relationship between the personal and the social, associative thinking, and resistance to change. We conclude with some reflections on applications of the theories.

Epistemological stance

We argue that there are synergies between the two theories in terms of their underpinning philosophies. PCP is explicitly constructivist, positing that individuals construct themselves and their phenomenal worlds from the raw material of their experience.

It has long been argued by some Jungian/post-Jungian scholars that the Jungian approach can be seen as having a constructivist underpinning (e.g., Young-Eisendrath, 1997; Zinkin, 2008). Also, both theories have important links with phenomenology. Kelly did not refer to his theory as phenomenological, and even distanced himself from this philosophy. However, what Kelly actually rejected was humanistic psychology’s misrepresentation of phenomenology; as classic phenomenology has become more available in English (especially the work of Merleau-Ponty), PCP has recognised the links between them (see Armezzani & Chiari, 2014; Butt & Warren, 2016, for discussions of PCP and phenomenology).

It is evident that PCP’s focus is the subjective world as it appears to and is made meaningful by the individual. Kelly was clear that it is not events themselves that have an impact upon the person, but the meaning that the events hold for them. Jung explicitly referred to his work as phenomenological on a number of occasions, even in the title of one of his major works, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (Jung, 1951/1968). Brooke (1991) argues that Jung’s psychological perspective is essentially that of existential psychology, but that “he lacked the tools to express his insights in a phenomenologically rigorous way” (p. 2). The possibilities for a phenomenological analytical psychology are further developed in the edited volume, Pathways into the Jungian World: Phenomenology and Analytical Psychology (Brooke, 2000). PCP and analytical psychology can thus be seen to share key phenomenological underpinnings, such as a focus on embodied meaning-making and a rejection of mind–body dualism, even though both their founders failed to fully recognise and articulate this.

Construing versus constructs

Although the “personal construct” is clearly an important concept for PCP, we feel that Jones (2022) perhaps misunderstands its role within the theory. At the heart of PCP is its model of the person as sense-maker and the activity of “construing.” Kelly was keen to emphasise the continual construing activity of the person and cautioned against thinking of constructs as psychological properties akin to traits or attitudes, or of confining them to the workings of cognition. PCP is a psychology of whole persons, and, as Jones herself points out, Kelly resisted the trend towards dividing the person’s psychology into thinking, feeling, and behaving. We should therefore think of construing as something a person does rather than of constructs as things they have; it may be helpful to think of the personal construct as a useful tool that is “ready to hand” for the person in their attempts to make sense of their world.

The personal and the social

Similarly, we argue that there is more opportunity in PCP to develop an understanding of the relationship between the personal and the social than Jones (2022) suggests. Both Kelly and later writers have spelled out the importance of relations with others in understanding the person and their attempts to change. Kelly recognised that the person is caught up in a web of social relations that have implications for how they can construct and reconstruct themselves, imposing affordances and limitations upon who they can effectively “be.” Procter (2009) discusses the construct as being both social and interactional, referring to his idea of the “family construct system” but also notes the recognition that writers since Kelly (notably Butt and Stojnov, but see also Harré & Gillet, 1994) have shown to the importance of language and culture in understanding personal construing. As Jones points out, since the emergence of social constructionism within psychology, some have attended to how PCP may align with this approach (e.g., Norton, 2006; Pavlovic, 2011). The importance and status of subjectivity within social constructionism has arguably changed a great deal in recent decades (e.g., Cromby, 2004; Hook, 2007), and we argue that PCP represents a real opportunity to form a theoretical bridge between social constructionism and psychology.

An alignment between PCP and social constructionism might seem to take the former further away from analytical psychology, given the person-focused nature of Jung’s theory that Jones highlights. However, the phenomenological reading of Jung, mentioned earlier (Brooke, 1991), argues that his theory is actually focused on the person-in-the-world, allowing for convergence even with a more social form of PCP. Furthermore, Jung’s emphasis on myth as the well-spring of personal meaning-making has clear parallels with the way some PCP scholars see social constructs as informing, but not determining, personal construing (Butt, 2001; Norton, 2006; Sapsford, 2022).

Nonrational and associative thinking

Jones (2022) appears to us to overstate the extent to which PCP is purely rationalistic. As pointed out above, construing is holistic and not fundamentally or principally cognitive. The concept of preverbal construing refers not only to a prelinguistic developmental stage. Although many of our constructs may be given verbal labels, the construct itself is a discrimination that we make and we may struggle to articulate or explain it. Burr (2006) has argued that some of our construing is manifested most readily through our physical movement and gestures, or through media such as art and dance, and the concept of the “submerged construct pole” refers to construct poles that appear unavailable to the person for conscious inspection. Our recent work on “construct clusters” (Burr et al., 2022) demonstrates how constructs frequently are nested within a network of psycho-social meanings and that construing is therefore, to some extent, associative.

If we recognise that construing in PCP can have qualities that are more like associative than rational thinking, it is apparent that there is less of a clear-cut difference between it and Jungian theory than Jones (2022) suggests. Indeed, there are other areas where PCP and analytical psychology share what we might call a complementary concern with the importance of nonrational modes of sense-making. Creative and artistic activities play an important part in Jungian therapy, as it is believed they provide a way for unconscious aspects of the psyche to manifest themselves. In PCP, there is a good deal of writing about artistic activities, which often (as noted above) emphasise the role of preverbal construing (Scheer & Burr, 2015). In developing Leitner’s (1988) experientially focused strand of PCP, Thomas and Schlutsmeyer (2004) highlight the value of an alignment with Hillman’s post-Jungian archetypal psychology, to facilitate an aesthetic understanding within PCP. From a similar position, Conaway (2013) presents an archetypally informed constructivist understanding of meaning in dreams.

Resistance to change

Jones (2022) seems to suggest a difference between Kelly and Jung in relation to the person’s orientation to change. She cites Kelly as proposing that our constructs “enable us to chart a course of behaviour,” (p. 640) in implied contrast to the Jungian view that autonomous complexes often stand in the way of psychological growth. We would argue that Kelly, too, sees our psychological processes—specifically our construing—as having the potential to make change difficult for us in some circumstances. This is because the associations between constructs within our construct system, of which we are often not fully consciously aware, may make change hard because helpful change to one construct may imply unhelpful change in another. Jones refers later in her article to the notion in PCP of “implicative dilemmas,” which is one way of considering resistance to change in the construct system. Butt (1998) suggests another concept that may be useful in thinking about resistance to change in PCP; that of “sedimentation.” It is a notion drawn from existential phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) and describes the way that comfortable and habitual ways of being can settle like sediment that the person is very reluctant to disturb. If “ways of construing” is substituted for “ways of being,” we can see how this can be a powerful idea for understanding resistance to change in PCP.

Reference to the Jungian concept of complexes, above, highlights another interesting parallel with PCP. Jung sees complexes as operating like subpersonalities or secondary selves. Despite the popular usage of the notion of “having a complex” about something, Jung does not see complexes as intrinsically pathological; it is only when they cause problems for the person and those around them that they might require therapeutic attention. A somewhat equivalent idea was proposed within the PCP tradition by Miller Mair (1977), who talks about the person as a “community of selves.” Like Jung, Mair does not consider these subpersonalities as intrinsically troublesome; it is rather a matter of whether they are functioning in helpful or unhelpful ways for the person.

Applications: Therapy and research

Jones (2022) focuses on clinical applications of the theories, but it should be noted that there has been a strong emphasis on research applications in PCP. Although this has most often been in the use of the repertory grid across a wide range of topics and discipline areas, the theory itself and other methods derived from it (such as the self-characterisation sketch) have also been used in research contexts, though to a lesser extent. The widespread use of the repertory grid in quantitative research has unfortunately led some to the conclusion that PCP is primarily concerned with the mathematical relationship between constructs, which is certainly not the case. There is therefore scope for a greater and more varied use of PCP in research, perhaps utilising less well-known methods derived from PCP such as “rivers of experience” (Iantaffi, 2011) and the “Salmon line” (Salmon, 2003).

Jungian psychology has been drawn on much less for research applications than has PCP. In part, this may reflect the emphasis in PCP on the development of practical methods for elucidating constructs, such as the repertory grid, which are rather easily transferred to a research setting. However, as Jones (2013) argues, it also reflects a political and cultural rejection of Jung amongst those who developed psychological approaches critical of the mainstream positivistic tradition. Jung is accused, however unfairly, of Nazi sympathies and antisemitic views, and is also seen as being too mystical in outlook. This contrasts with Freudian psychology and its successors, which have been drawn on heavily in recent critical approaches (e.g., Hollway & Jefferson, 2013; Pavón Cuéllar, 2010). There are a few examples of Jungian ideas informing empirical research, such as Kostera’s (2012) work on organisational myths and archetypes. The example of PCP can perhaps encourage Jungians to consider more how the rich ideas in Jung’s theoretical writing could help to enhance psychological research.

Conclusion

Despite their evident differences in theoretical content, we believe that there are important synergies between Jungian and Kellian psychologies. They share a constructivist and phenomenological stance, which marks them out from most mainstream psychologies; if PCP is accepted as less rationalistic than often claimed, both theories recognise psychological processes operating beyond immediate awareness, and, in particular, the difficulties these can pose for personal change; and both theories either explicitly or implicitly understand the person in terms of their social context, again marking them out from most mainstream, individualistic psychologies. We believe that PCP (and perhaps Jungian psychology too) offers opportunities to bridge the divide between psychology and social constructionism. Finally, both theories deserve greater visibility in the world of academic psychology and its applications, and we argue for greater consideration of their potential use in research.