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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 |
| Personality | ||||||||
| Unlike the majority of
personality definitions, where personality is
most often defined as distinctive individual character or that inherent
quality
of human beings which makes them individual, personality in PCP is
closer to
the eyes of the beholder. Personality is an abstraction from the
activity of a
person, with subsequent generalization of this abstraction to all
manner of
relationships of that person to other persons. Four points about personality are of crucial importance:
The person in PCP is perceived as the intersect of many construct dimensions. This means that a person is a unique combination of dichotomous categorical interpretations. Although it is often said that PCP equates personality with personal construct systems, persons in PCP are above all social beings, construed in the realm of social relations. Society therefore presents the necessary condition for the constitution of personal beings, their persons and personalities. Furthermore, social situations and social relationships are not determined by some inner essence of individual beings that occurs within them. Instead, people are determined and formed by their interpersonal relations. Thus personality in PCP does not reside in the human personal interior, but in the social space with other personal beings. One has to enter these social relations in order to become a person him or herself. Furthermore, personality is not given at birth; instead it is potential which has to be constructed through mutual relationship with others. Simply stated, we need others to acquire our own personality. Talking about others, we reveal our own abstractions, dimensions of meaning which comprise our own personal systems. In order to assess the personality of an individual, we must assess the ways (s)he makes sense about others. Therefore, what one says about another person becomes the source of data about the speaker, more than the person who is being spoken about. |
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| References |
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Dušan Stojnov
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