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THE INTERNET ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF
PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY |
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| Main Page |
| Contents |
| Alphabetical Index |
| Hints for prints |
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| Impressum |
| Core role structure | |
| Role is a
central concept
in PCP, one that developed Mead ’s (1913/1982)
concept of
sociality in a clinical context. Role is an activity based on one’s
interpretation of the thinking of another person with whom one is
interacting. Your theory of yourself as a person is built on role
relationships with significant others, and core role structure
for Kelly was thus central to a
person’s sense of integrity. His discussion of it centres on
difficulties
clients experience in effecting psychological restructuring in therapy.
So threat is defined as the awareness of
immanent change in core role structure. People seek personal change but
might find it entails more change than they bargained for. This threat
accounts for the resistance observed
by so many
psychotherapists. The experience of guilt is
also explained
in terms of core role: an awareness of dislodgement from core role
structure. A recurring theme in Kelly’s writing is advice to the
clinician to adopt the credulous approach
; to listen carefully for the client’s
meanings without reading in his or her own. Guilt should not be thought
of in normative or absolute terms where it is a deviation from some
societal
rules. Instead it is a result of personal construction, for example the
particular actions that one expects of oneself as a parent, that one fails to live up to (Kelly,
1969). The concept of core role structure (like Mead’s self process) proposes a self which is a social construction and hence multi-faceted, but at the same time accounts for the experience of ‘real’ and 'true’ selves. In everyday life, we recognise a whole range of roles that we engage in. Nevertheless, we feel as though some are more central to us than others. It is not that peripheral selves are in any sense ‘false’, but they do not draw in our core role structure. Mair (1977) suggested the metaphor of a ‘community of selves’ to account for this experience and to help articulate the complicated nature of our role relationships. Contemporary construct theorists, for example, Leitner and his colleagues, have developed this conception in order to understand the importance of vital relationships in our lives. see: Core constructs |
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| References |
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Trevor Butt
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