Excerpt: Kelly was aware that philosophical speculation is inescapable for any scientific investigation. In fact, he chose to state his underlying assumptions right at the beginning, thus uncovering the philosophical roots of his theoretical position. He did that by coining two expressions that, consistent with his theoretical formulation, are shaped like the contrasting poles of a discrimination, a construct: accumulative fragmentalism versus constructive alternativism. Without entering the arena of the debate in the specialized field of the philosophy of science, Kelly suggested a revolutionary alternative to the prevailing notions about the nature of scientific knowledge, and pursued its implications at the levels of theory construction and of || its clinical and psychotherapeutic application. On the other hand, his theoretical approach can be, and has been, applied to all the areas subjected to psychological inquiry. What he did in the 1950s was so much ahead of its time that his work is only now at the cutting edge of contemporary psychology and psychotherapy.

A book that proposes to outline a systematic approach to psychotherapy cannot omit describing the psychological theory such an approach belongs to. George A. Kelly had the same opinion, in that he put an analysis of the differences between the philosophical assumptions of “accumulative fragmentalism” and “constructive alternativism” before the exposition of his theory of personality and his psychotherapeutic proposal. Choosing the title for the book “Constructivist Psychotherapy: A Narrative Hermeneutic Approach” represents the attempt to mark a significant differentiation from the more orthodox expositions of Kelly’s personal construct psychotherapy on which we heavily base our approach, and at the same time to specify as much as possible our metatheoretical and theoretical references. Relevance: The book has an extensive exposition of the different constructivist views on knowledge with their links with genetic epistemology, autopoietic theory, phenomenology, hermeneutics, social constructionism, radical constructivism.

Purpose: The problem of entering a “mainstream” is analyzed by looking at the problem of recursive splitting in the use of constructivism, illustrating this problem with the special case of personal construct psychology. Problem: In this opinion article I outline a number of issues intrinsic to radical constructivism, and also to other less radical forms of constructivism, which tend to lead its users in the opposite direction to any detectable “mainstream,” indeed leading them steadily away from any unifying flow that might eventually leak into a mainstream. Method: By analyzing the “constructivist field” with regard to a series of “miss-takes” easily made by those approaching the radical constructivist outlook, and also with regard to an intrinsic tendency towards idiosyncratic individualism, I want to show the deepening degree of fragmentizing and splitting that I regard as endemic to the constructivist epistemology. I also describe how the metaphoric power of the term “constructivism” has been lost and has now become a dead metaphor, and I use the “gyres” metaphor of W. B. Yeats to describe the impending chaos and dissolution of the constructivisms. Implications: I make six main suggestions as to how this state of events might possibly be slowed down or even recovered from, thus avoiding ongoing deterioration and its self-disintegrating conclusion.

Key words: metaphor, personal construct psychology, splitting, schismogenesis, manipulative psychology, accumulative fragmentalism, George Kelly, Heinz von Foerster, Paul Feyerabend, Gregory Bateson

George Kelly’s professional focus was on supporting people who were struggling with the stresses of their lives. Finding that the Freudian ideas he had been offered as tools in his own professional training offered little in working towards change with many of his clients, Kelly developed his own approach based upon a constructivist perspective of learning (which he called constructive alternativism) centred on the core metaphor of person-as-scientist. People, like good scientists, should always be open to exploring new data and considering alternative explanations and conceptions, rather than becoming fixed in established ways of thinking. Kelly’s work developed into a recognised approach in psychology, and became very influential in at least one school of thought in science education. Kelly did not only offer a theory that could support clinical practice for therapists, but also offered a methodology for exploring a learner’s developing thinking. In his own educational work, he found that his approach offered insights into teachers’ classroom difficulties. This chapter considers the core ideas of Kelly’s theory in comparison with other constructivist perspectives employed in science education. The chapter also discusses how Kelly’s personal construct theory can inform classroom teaching and reflects on an approach that explicitly expects people to behave scientifically as a perspective on science teaching and learning.

Key words: the method of triads, repertory grid, personal constructs, constructivism, children’s science, alternative conceptions, person-as-scientist, falsificationism, accumulative fragmentalism, systems of constructs, building one’s own maze, construct repertory