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Invalidation |
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Invalidation
is one of the outcomes of the
testing out of our construing. We act in
a manner that is consistent with the ways we make sense of the world. By so doing we can consider the consequences
of our behaviour. Sometimes our sense-making
is contradicted by the feedback we receive about our experimentation. It is this that the term invalidation
encompasses. At other times it is
confirmed, what Kelly termed validation.
The feedback we receive may be sensory - if I assume that the floor is
solid and I find it crumbling when I start to step on it, I’m going to
revise
my theory and keep off it. But very
commonly it is from the reactions of others, or our entering into the
ways
others’ see the world, that the effectiveness of our own construing is
evaluated.
Invalidation
may be particularly
problematic in childhood when our developing sense of ourselves as a
meaning-maker is crucially being elaborated. Bannister
(1963), for example, linked serial invalidation with the development
of schizophrenia. However
invalidation
is not, in itself, a problem but is central to the elaboration of our
construing system in ways that approximate reality. |
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References
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- Bannister,
D. (1963). The genesis of schizophrenic thought disorder: a serial
invalidation
hypothesis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 109, 680-686.
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Beverly M. Walker
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