This bibliometric review covers the scientific production with or about the repertory grid technique between 1998 and 2007. The analysis of previous reviews suggests the need for a more careful and broad process of bibliographic research. With this aim, 24 bibliographic sources were used to cover a wide range of specialties. We began with the drawing up of an explicit protocol in which the research terms were detailed. Then the bibliographic sources were consulted, taking into account a specification of inclusion and exclusion criteria. As a result of this process, 973 references were obtained: 468 were journal papers, 335 book chapters, 108 doctoral theses and 62 books. The review also evaluates the types of documents found, the evolution of the number of works published, the repertory grid’s fields of application and the degree of openness to other disciplines. The most relevant authors, their affiliations, their countries and the publication language are also revealed in this article, as well as the major journals contributing to disseminate the work done with this technique. Relevance: Since Kelly created his personal construct theory (PCT), the repertory grid technique (RGT) has been the most well-known instrument used not only by researchers and practitioners within PCT but also across a variety of disciplines and approaches. In the present work, we try to portray a recent picture of the status of the RGT using bibliometric analysis.

Kelly’s personal construct theory, put forward in 1955, is considered the first constructivist theory of personality and the first expression of those contemporary psychotherapeutic perspectives grounded on a constructivist view of knowledge. Notwithstanding the similarities between psychological constructivism and the phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition, Kelly always rejected the parallel of his theory to phenomenology, regarding the latter as unacceptable since idealistic, solipsistic, and particularistic. In this first article of a work subdivided into three parts, the Authors explain such criticism by Kelly with his knowledge of phenomenology deriving from secondary sources, and stress the wide possibilities of a phenomenological interpretation and elaboration of his theory. Relevance: The publication highlights the analogy between psychological constructivism and phenomenology.

In this part of our work about a comparison between Kelly’s personal construct theory and phenomenology, we enter the fields of psychotherapy and research. The topic of intersubjectivity, meant as original recognition of the other’s subjectivity, provides a backdrop for both phenomenological clinic and Kellyan psychotherapy. Though Kelly never used the term “intersubjectivity,” his theory and the corollary of sociality in particular, reveals a view of interpersonal relationships as intercorporeality, which is much closer to phenomenological ideas than to the cognitive ones. Depending on such commonality, in either cases clinical relationship is not viewed as an “aspecific factor” of psychotherapy, but as the essential tool for the care of other. Furthermore, the core role of intersubjectivity in scientific knowledge implies a radical revision of the criteria of research. Consistently with the intent of a science of experience, it is no more a matter of collecting data, as of accepting meanings. Psychological research has to refound itself in continuity with life and recognize the need for a real involvement and real interaction with the subjects, as far as to reverse the traditional relation between clinic and research. It is nonsense to conceive clinic as an applicative sector of a pure science because clinic, on the contrary, is the place where one can know, in first-person, those meaningful realities which take shape in the intersubjective exchange of ideas, in order to make them comprehensible and controllable. Relevance: The publication explores the dimension of intersubjectivity in phenomenology (starting from Husserl) and personal construct theory, and its relevance in psychotherapy and research.

Mancuso’s (1996) article is to be welcomed for its attempt to bring together social constructionism, personal construct theory and narrative psychology. Whilst the underlying tendency of the three approaches-to view the text as self-enclosed and constitutive of reality-is drawn out well, the differences between them are underplayed. Most significantly, these include the difference between the individualist ontology in Mancuso’s version of personal construct theory and the social ontology that is the basis of social constructionism. The fact that Mancuso ignores these differences in ontology ultimately thwarts his commendable aim of reintroducing issues of individual psychology into a constructionist framework.

George Kelly’s personal construct theory (PCT) has been accused of disregarding the role of emotion in human life. This charge originates from a misunderstanding of PCT’s basic assumptions. Kelly deals with experiences commonly called “emotional” in terms of dimensions of transition according to a genuinely constructivist epistemology. A review of the literature shows few elaborations of Kelly’s original formulation of constructs relating to transitions, and even some contributions critical of Kelly’s approach to emotions. This article rebuts the criticisms while making clear the epistemological and theoretical bases of Kelly’s treatment of transitional experiences, its peculiarities, and its role in the diagnostic/therapeutic process. Relevance: It deals with the notion of emotion from a genuinely constructivist epistemology such as that envisioned by Kelly’s personal construct theory.

George A. Kelly, a psychologist born in Kansas, began to elaborate personal construct theory in the first half of the twentieth century; Humberto R. Maturana, a Chilean biologist, started to conceive his theory of autopoiesis during the second half of the same century. The two were unknown to each other, yet their theories show striking similarities. Though the focus of convenience of personal construct theory is psychotherapy whereas the theory of autopoiesis is a biological theory of knowledge, Kelly’s ingenious ideas can be enriched by the way in which Maturana deals with features common to both theories.

This paper is part of an ongoing reflection about the way PCT (Personal Construct Theory) can illuminate artistic theory and practice, and aid progress in artistic pedagogy. It is, quite uncharacteristically, written from my own perspective as a practicing artist, and attempts to map the construct system which forms the foundation of my aesthetic world and to link it to my personal construct system in general. Why do I like what I like? Why do I make art the way I do? How can my work can be understood as an attempt to elaborate and define my construct system?

Cognitive models have contributed significantly to the understanding of unipolar depression and its psychological treatment. Our research group has been working on the notion of cognitive conflict viewed as personal dilemmas according to personal construct theory. We use a novel method for identifying those conflicts using the repertory grid technique (RGT). This study aims to empirically test the hypothesis that an intervention focused on the dilemma(s) specifically detected for each patient will enhance the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression. We expect that adding a dilemma-focused intervention to CBT will increase the efficacy of one of the more prestigious therapies for depression, thus resulting in a significant contribution to the psychological treatment of depression. Relevance: This article describes the protocol of a controlled study aimed at testing the efficacy of dilemma-focused therapy (DFT) as an intervention in the treatment of depression. DFT is a constructivist-oriented intervention targeting the cognitive conflicts that block the pathway to change. Constructivist epistemology has shown its potential for creation and innovation across a variety of psychotherapy approaches. Personal construct therapy is one of these approaches, and DFT arises from it as a structured, but still flexible, intervention aimed at making explicit and fostering resolution of the specific dilemma(s) found for that particular patient in the initial repertory grid assessment.

The idea that internal conflicts play a significant role in mental health has been extensively addressed in various psychological traditions. In the context of personal construct theory, several measures of conflict have been operationalized using the repertory grid technique. All of them capture the notion that change, although desirable from the viewpoint of a given set of constructs, becomes undesirable from the perspective of other constructs. The goal of this study is to explore the presence of cognitive conflicts in a clinical sample (n = 284) and compare it to a control sample (n = 322). It is also meant to clarify which among the different types of conflict studied provides a greater clinical value and to investigate its relationship to symptom severity (SCL-90-R). Of the types of cognitive conflict studied, implicative dilemmas were the only ones to discriminate between clinical and nonclinical samples. Participants with implicative dilemmas showed higher symptom severity, and those from the clinical sample displayed a higher frequency of dilemmas than those from the nonclinical sample.

Who can say what nature is? Is it what now exists about us, including all the tiny hidden things that wait so patiently to be discovered? Or is it the vista of all that is destined to occur, whether tomorrow or in some distant eon of time? Or is nature infinitely more varied than this, the myriad trains of events that might ensue if we were to be so bold, ingenious, and irreverent as to take a hand in its management? Personal construct theory is a notion about how man may launch out from a position of admitted ignorance, and how he may aspire from one day to the next to transcend his own dogmatisms. It is, then, a theory of man’s personal inquiry – a psychology of human quest. It does not say what has been or will be found, but proposes rather how we might go about looking for it.