Personal construct and family systems theories can profit from an exchange of ideas concerning the relationship between their personal and interpersonal aspects of construction. This article examines three possible points of contact between the two orientations. First, we suggest that personal construct psychology could profit from addressing the important contributions of the family context to the development of each individual’s system. Second, we address the impact of the person’s constructions on the larger family system. Third, we suggest that the family system itself develops a system of shared constructions that define and bind its identity and interactions. Each of these areas of interface carries implications for therapy, and specific intervention techniques corresponding to each of these are discussed.

Constructive metatheory is playing an increasingly apparent role in the evolution of theories of human personality and psychotherapy. Three basic features of constructivism are outlined: (1) proactive cognition, (2) morphogenic nuclear structure, and (3) self-organizing development. Parallels to and relationships with evolutionary epistemology and autopoiesis are briefly noted. The emergence of constructive metatheory is traced from Vico, Kant, and Vaihinger to its diverse contemporary expressions.

Ausubel’s (1963, 1968, 1978) assimilation theory of learning is used to describe the process by which humans engage in meaningful learning. High levels of meaningful learning are characterized as underlying the process of new knowledge construction. Concept maps and Vee diagrams are employed to illustrate aspects of assimilation theory, foundational constructivist epistemological ideas, and tools that can facilitate meaningful learning and knowledge construction. The central thesis is that the process of meaningful learning, as understood through assimilation theory, is fundamental to both the psychological process of cognitive development of individuals and the epistemological process of new knowledge construction.

A distinction is drawn between a predicational and a mediational model. Predication involves the act of affirming, denying, or qualifying broader patterns of meaning in relation to narrower or targeted patterns of meaning. Mediation occurs when something formed outside a process is taken in and comes to play a role in that process that is not intrinsic to it. Fundamental to predication is the fact that meanings under processing are oppositional. George Kelly’s theoretical understanding of construction was as a predicational process. The term construction is often confounded with these two views of cognition. Kelly’s interpretation of construction is contrasted with the cognitive approach of Piaget and the social constructionist views of Harre and Gergen. It is demonstrated that Kelly’s clearer understanding of construction as a predicational process enables him to lend the individual a capacity for personal agency that the other theories fail to capture

Among constructivist metatheoretical approaches, a strong version is defined as that which reveals reality to be actively and subjectively constructed rather than passively incorporated as objective environmental or innate “facts” by the subject. Given this definition, however, ambiguities arise concerning the potential and limits of construct integration over the course of development. Piaget’s stronger constructivist model is offered as a means of clarifying and broadening the strong constructivist position on knowledge evolution. Piaget’s genetic epistemology model places dramatic emphasis on the organizational capacity of the subject, specifying personal development as a strongly continuous and subsuming process. Discussion of commonalities between Piaget’s position and Kelly’s personal construct theory concludes this article.

Although Mahoney (1988) has traced the heritage of general constructive metatheory and Zelhart and Jackson (1983) have examined the influences of Kelly’s Kansas environment on his developing theory, there has been relatively little investigation of the origins of Kelly’s constructivism. Although Kelly (7955) was undoubtedly influenced by many philosophers and psychologists as he developed the psychology of personal constructs, the roles of these people have not been extensively investigated. However, Kelly (1955, 1969) cited, in a general way, the works of Korzybski and Moreno several times in describing the origins of his theory. Lecture notes taken by one of Kelly’s students (Barry, 1948) reveal more specifically the sources (Korzybski, 1933, 1943; Moreno, 1937) that seemed influential as Kelly developed his theories. Kelly borrowed ideas of Korzybski and Moreno, among many others, in creating parts of his role therapy and personality theory. In adapting Konybski’s notion that semantic and linguistic labels are used to understand phenomena in the world, Kelly also accepted the idea that these semantic labels are indeed constructed by individuals. In adapting Moreno’s spontaneous improvisation and self-presentation techniques as a way to change semantic labels, Kelly emphasized that construction processes occur and change in a social realm.