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CONSTRUING
CONSTRUCTIONISM: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE TENSION BETWEEN PCP AND SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIONISM
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Bill Warren
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Faculty of Education, University of
Newcastle, Australia |
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This paper
represents a synthesis that
brings together several lines of thinking about the supposed challenge
that
social constructionism brings to personal construct psychology (PCP). It consolidates previous writing within PCP
relevant to this challenge, and notes problems with earlier theories
that are
analogous to social constructionism, as well as considering 'the
social' in
PCP. While not an argument in any strict
sense it does reach a conclusion and it does raise some points of
criticism for
social constructionism, albeit that these are not new.
Keywords: social constructionism, personal
construct psychology, Marxism, neostructuralism, pragmatism, individual
agency
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This paper is a journey which
traverses two different paths, each one lined with ‘reminiscences’;
reminders,
that is, of ideas and issues previously raised in different contexts.
First, it
revisits some philosophical difficulties for positions in
social-psychological
thinking that share the intellectual origins that social
constructionism
appears to share. These have been elaborated from different
perspectives over a
period of years. For example, as to the decentring of the subject and
the value
of reconsidering a radical strand in western thought - the
anarcho-psychological
tradition - that would recentre that subject (Warren, 1997); as to the
philosophical problems within Marxism and the problem of the individual
or the self like in social
theory (Warren, 1998); and in an outline of a far reaching
critique of ‘neo-structuralism’ as framed by Frank (1989) as the
lopsided and
problematic underpinning of positions such as that which is social
constructionism
(Warren, 2000). Second, it examines the role of ‘the social’ in
personal
construct psychology from those same elaborations and from the work of
others.
Overall, it is a review paper, but one which also goes – if but
circumstantially
- to support an argument that even if social constructionism is
‘correct’, or
at least is an expanding rather than degenerating research program
(Lakatos,
1970/1977) there is no particular difficulty for personal construct
psychology.
That is, in its initial formulation by Kelly (1955/1991), in early
commentary
on it, and in its development as a theory of human social-psychological
functioning, personal construct psychology is not only compatible with
the
broad thrust of social constructionism as it makes more precise the
impact of
the social domain on the individual, but possibly necessary to it
(Warren,
2000). Further still, even if personal construct psychology is ‘wrong’
in the
face of the arguments of social constructionism, then that merely
completes the
usefulness of the psychology of personal constructs, from which we can
now move
on. Personal construct psychology would appear to be in a ‘no lose’
situation vis
a vis social constructionism!
SOME
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS FOR SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIONISM
Lineage
or Heredity
Old Family
In so far as social constructionism
can be seen as having an intellectual lineage from Marx and Engel’s
response to
Hegel, it remains exposed to philosophical criticism that emerges in
response
to the theories advanced by these thinkers. It is Marx and Engels who
most
vigorously focus on the social domain and who provide the clearest
statement of
the premise that guides all subsequent thinking in this mode. This is
given succinctly
when they revisit philosophy after having determined but a year
previously, in
their The Holy Family (1845),
that philosophy was a vacuous exercise which
merely mystified things; that is, in their work The German Ideology (1845-6/1976)
written in 1845-6 but not published in full until 1932, and in English
translation till 1964. In The German
Ideology, Marx and Engels outline in
detail how the different stages of human development see each
generation handed
from its predecessor a set of productive forces and a view of the
relationship
that human beings have with nature and each other, which prescribes for
that
new generation its “conditions of life” and gives it a “definite
development, a
special character”. In general, their analysis of history shows “that
circumstances
make men just as much as men make circumstances” (p. 62), that “it is
not consciousness
that determines life, but life that determines consciousness” (p.42).
An inflexible reading of these last
ideas and the analyses on which they rest and which rest on them,
significantly
diminishes the here and now importance of the individual. The
longer-term
significance of the individual may be a different matter in that in the
‘classless society’ the true individual will be realised. However,
while Marx
acknowledges that each generation modifies the legacy from the last
generation,
that modification is itself less to do with individuals and more to do
with
social forces and movements. Those forces and movements comprise
sub-elements
within any particular set of social arrangements that constitute an antithesis;
a set of oppositional or non-conformist interests to those that prevail
at any
given time and constitute the thesis,
and these interests eventually bring
about compromise. This compromise is the synthesis, and the compromise
itself takes
hold and becomes itself the status quo, the thesis. Thus the process
continues
until the dynamic of change - class conflict - is extinguished with the
revolution that will usher in the classless society. This is the materialist
theory of history, the idea that our mental state, our
psychology is determined
by the material conditions of life. That is, that the manner in which
human beings
go about the process of producing food, shelter and so on, in order to
live,
generates an individual consciousness, and a shared consciousness that
is expressed
in a group culture. It is in this argument that Marx ‘turns Hegel on
his head’.
Marx locates the otherwise mysterious forces that Hegel sees as working
themselves out in human history – a progressive development of
self-consciousness and reason - in the more familiar conditions of the
struggles of human beings, struggles that generate a belief in those
mysterious
unseen forces in the first place.
Various criticisms emerged of what
was to become Marxism. A shallow criticism - though perhaps fair
comment,
nonetheless - asked, if people were as blind to reality as Marx and
Engels
argued - if people suffered generally from a ‘false consciousness’
concerning
the truth, that is, if we all suffer from ideology - then how were Marx and
Engels able to see that truth? Lenin’s (1902/1973) specific answer was
the
notion of the ‘vanguard party’ composed of individuals who could ‘see
more
clearly’, who were free from ideology.
The differentiation between ideology
and
that scientific thinking that disclosed the truth or reality of the
materialist
theory of history, however, remains a problem. This is somewhat ironic
when
Marx and Engels rely on traditional scientific thinking of their day
and the
data it produces, to support their own theory; the very thinking that
was on
their own account, illusory and its ‘truths’ tainted. Wanting to speak
the
truth and be taken seriously when one’s truth is that there is no
truth,
critiquing the objectivity of data using data, being asked to provide
empirical
data to support an argument to the effect that empiricism is not the
only way
to knowledge, and so on, always generates conundrums.
More sophisticated argument
targeted particular features of the materialist theory and, for
example, addressed
the problem of whether the existence of social classes was a necessary
or a
sufficient or both a necessary and sufficient condition for the
existence of
the State. The point was to challenge the logic of their argument that
with the
end of social class, so the end of the State. There is the related
issue of the
tightness of the relationship between the superstructure (cultural
practices,
ways of thinking and feeling, moral imperatives and so on) and the
economic
base. Marx and Engels in different of their writings sometimes talk of
the
economic conditions of life determining
consciousness, at other times merely conditioning an already existing
consciousness and cultural life;
indeed, the above
quotations from The German Ideology
are already ambiguous. Again, Kamenka
(1965) considered the notion of ‘causality’ in Marxism, discussing a
richer
idea which involved attention to both an alleged ‘cause’ and the
‘field’ in
which it operated. In a particular ‘field’ - a specific set of social
conditions,
for example - an action may be successful in achieving a goal, but in a
different field a different outcome may ensue. Kamenka’s (1965) example
notes
how the introduction of the steam engine may well produce capitalism in
one set
of wider social conditions, but not in a different set of social
conditions.
And, more recent thinking has attempted at different times to centre
different
factors, to ‘reduce’ a situation or event to different, allegedly more
‘primary’
dimension of life, other than social class. For example, reduction to
gender,
to membership of a particular ethnic group or clan, to a generational
category
(‘grey power’, ‘baby boomers’) to observable or invisible physical or
mental
difference from the ‘norm’.
These comments should not be taken
to mean that a Marxist analysis of social and economic life is not a
most
powerful one, exposing levels of action and interaction of social
forces
without which many social institutions and their impacts would be
incomprehensible.
There is a powerful sociological analysis in Marxism, but one with a
number of
philosophical problems when it speaks in a voice of ‘totality’ or ‘the
last’ or
‘the final’ analysis. Of course, these general issues, and the more
particular
matter of Marxism lacking a psychology of the individual have been
addressed by
scholarship in this area. The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research
(the Frankfurt School), for
example, developed in various dimensions as its exemplar theorists
tackled the
problem. Thus, their attempt to develop psychoanalysis as a theory to
fill the
particular gap in Marxism, the gap of there being no psychology of the
individual (for example, Marcuse, 1955/1969). The problem persists
within Marxist
scholarship with attempts ongoing to develop a theory of personality
based on historical
materialism (for example, Seve 1974/1978, Tucker, 1980). Equally
illustrative
is the School’s investigation of the intersection of the social and the
psychological in the phenomenon of authoritarian
personality, as they charted
the micro and macro origins, manifestation, and the social consequences
of this
outlook (Fromm, 1942; Adorno et al, 1950). Or, further, their attempts
to
articulate a notion of ‘reason’ – or Reason - in a theoretical context
that
challenged the very idea, usefully distinguishing traditional or
instrumental
reason (reasoning) from substantive or critical reasoning in a fashion
is not
irrelevant to our present reflections (for example, Habermas
1981/1987). That
is, their concept of critical reasoning provides a way of recognizing
the type
of matters raised by social constructionism without surrender to a
shallow
relativism, and of incorporating, rather than jettisoning, ethics and
values,
or rendering these equally relative.
Whether Freud and Marx can in fact
be integrated so cleverly, and whether an idea of reason can be
salvaged, is a
wider matter; but it is a matter that is alive, not yet dead. The
debates
around social constructionism echo these problems, and social
constructionism
is not oblivious to at least the issues, nor to the lineage. Gergen
(1995), for
example, acknowledges some of the history - if in general terms and
without the
meticulousness that the Hegel-Marx debate requires - and summarises the
dimensions of criticism of social constructionism, though in a fashion
that may
give them less ‘bite’. This may simply reflect his then purpose, or it
may
represent something deeper; for example, the state of interest in the
history
of ideas and problems of philosophy outside the discipline of
Philosophy. He
prefers, rather, to see criticism as somehow lost in its own
fundamentalist
paradigm, or to derive from “investments in various forms of life that
appear
to be threatened by” the arguments of social constructionism (p. 92).
While few
would disagree with his wish for constructive dialogue between social
constructionism
and its critics, and various critics do point to the valuable insights
that
this position generates, a less dismissive approach to what are
long-standing
problems in philosophy may be more productive.
The New Generation
The offspring of this last family
are less easy to identify than their parents were. However, there is a
clan
that is found under the broad characterisation that is
post-structuralism and
post-modernism. An adequate discussion of this clan is beyond the
parameters of
the present project, but their general outlook is given first by way of
growing
critiques of it, and by a specific critique in the next section below.
In
essence, the critiques go, first, to similar matters that had been
raised
against Marx, and second, to particular issues within these ‘isms’.
As to the first, there is a series
of questions that we can for convenience frame as questions to social
constructionism as they were to Marxism. For example, is social
constructionism
free of the very influences it asserts? If not, then how do those who
are
privileged enough to see the ‘truth’ avoid that social conditioning to
which
the rest of personkind appears doomed. Again, can a rich and
thoroughgoing
history of reflection on the individual in such thinkers as Spinoza or
Leibniz
or Kant or Hegel, be dismissed as being, simply, ‘illusory’ because of
the
influence of social forces always operating on the individual, no less
on these
thinkers themselves? Yet again, and derived from the very ideas these
last
thinkers themselves raise, are there different considerations that may
need to
be engaged differently in relation to, respectively, ‘individuals’,
‘persons’,
‘selves’, and ‘subjects’ and does social constructionism do this?
Further, following
Kamenka (1965), will the same outcome always emerge for each
individual/person/self/subject
saturated with the same social discourses, or is there room for a
significant
personal interpretation of events and experience? Finally, does social
constructionism
conjure with forces and influences that seem to have no dynamism and no
‘home’
without reference to a centre or locus such as in the individual human
being
might provide? (Frank, 1989)
As to the second, there are several
points to note, though not to detail, develop or defend here. First,
given the
significance of language, of discourse, we might note that a number of
critics
have challenged the adequacy of accounts of language given in so called
post-structuralist and post-modern thinking, and by extension, in
social
constructionism. One particular issue is whether both the denotative
and the
connotative aspects of language are sufficiently dealt with. More
generally,
Passmore’s (1985) discussion of the debate between Searle and Derrida,
a debate
turning around Austin’s account of the relation between ‘words and
things’,
discloses the underlying tension between a view that the problems and
questions
of epistemology can be, and cannot be, dealt with in the Sociology of
Knowledge, rather than in Philosophy. It also indicates, as also have
others
(for example, Frank, 1989), that the heirs of the Swiss linguist,
Saussure, may
not have fully understood the exact nature of that inheritance.
Moreover, they
may have also overlooked substantial accounts of the meaning of meaning
in the
work of thinkers like Frege, Russell, or Tarski (Scruton, 1994). There
is then
ground for concern as to whether social constructionism has fully
digested
reflection in the domains of philosophy of language or of linguistic
philosophy,
whatever the validity of the claim that social constructionism might
support
that it is in Sociology of Knowledge, not in Philosophy, that matters
will be
resolved.
Again, there is more targeted and
severe criticism of social constructionism expressed, for example, by
Maze
(2001). Maze sees social constructionism as “just the most recent of an
apparently endless succession of relativistic epistemologies”, a
position that
“borrows from deconstruction the same self-defeating scepticism” (p.
394). For
him, its epistemology, as a central feature, denies the possibility of
objective knowledge and is thus self-contradictory. As Maze notes of
Gergen
(1985) as the chief exponent of social constructionism, to
assert anything sincerely is to
assert it as true. ... One could hardly dispute that Gergen’s
publications
contain strings of assertions and are intended to be taken as attempts
to say
what is the case with regard to knowledge and discourse. We can
politely
disregard his self-depreciating disclaimer that his accounts are
offered only
for their entertainment value (p. 394).
Maze (2001) argues from a
realist-objectivist standpoint and Liebrucks (2001), independently
develops
this argument. The key concept of social constructionism is shown as
composed
of three core themes or theses, none of which is incompatible with
realism.
Indeed, he argues, they are unintelligible if grounded in anti-realism.
And
Danziger (1997) in a comprehensive review which does recognize the
valuable challenge
that social constructionism lays down for psychology (and other fields
of
enquiry) also concludes that exponents remain dependent on the very
positions
they seek to repudiate. He concludes that social constructionism’s own
challenge “arises out of the predicament of the critic who wishes to
develop a
truly alternative agenda while still tied to the traditions by ties
both
visible and invisible” (Danziger, 1997, p. 416).
There are in these two dimensions
of response to social constructionism contributions that go to
questions that
arose generally and have bedevilled social theory since Kant began and
Hegel
completed the ‘Copernican revolution’ by borrowing from the then
developing
style of thinking that was hermeneutics (Redding, 1996). That
revolution put
the ‘knower’ back at the centre of knowing, and, thus, the problems
ever since
of giving due weight to the impacts of social life - however understood
- and
individual sense-making. These problems are not unique to social
constructionism but would seem to remain unresolved for, in, and by
social
constructionism.
Whether or not it inherits
defective genes from the old family, social constructionism appears not
to be
free of some acquired defects. There is, however, an even more powerful
critique that goes more generally to its genotype, and this is worth
separate
attention.
A Critique of
Neo-Structuralism
The term neostructuralism was
coined by Manfred Frank (1989) and his is a close and complex argument
centred
in a critique of key figures of so-called post-structuralist or
post-modern
thinking. We could not begin to address that argument fully here. In
essence,
though, Frank’s argument was that thinkers who had allegedly discarded
structuralism have rather expressed but a different version of it;
still
positing forces over and above the individual, forces by and through
which the
individual’s consciousness is allegedly constructed, even ‘structured’,
most
obviously through language. All of them ended up discussing an idea of
one sort
or another concerning forces external to the individual, an individual
who was
but a passive ‘location’ or ‘conduit’ for those forces; those forces,
that is,
acted as ‘structurings’ of their consciousness. Frank’s counter
proposition was
that even given these structuring forces of class or gender or
ethnicity or
whatever, and however they were felt by the individual (as discourses,
or as
subjects becoming ‘objects’over which power and discipline are
exercised) there
remains, and, importantly must remain,
a subjectivity that is the
active,
creative location of whatever forces and influences play upon it. Thus,
the argument
between modernism and postmodernism, as Reijen, (1992) reminds us, is
that
between a perspective on the self that sees it as autonomous (free),
relatively,
and a perspective that sees it as heteronomous
(that is, subject to
rules). In
these terms, Van Reijen (1992) reads Frank as saying that those who
stress the
heteronomy of the subject and who “attribute to structure all power and
the capability
of self‑reflection ... give in to an anthropomorphizing of structure”
(p. 320).
Frank’s general intention was to find a compromise between French
poststructuralism (antirationalism) and German hermeneutics
(rationalism) and
he resurrects Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics in his argument toward this
compromise. Frank’s compromise provides very interesting insights for
personal
construct psychology, as well as for the tensions between personal
construct
psychology and social constructionism (Warren,
2000).
Frank’s (1989) critique of
Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard, Gadamer and Derrida, showed that
they each
saw human beings still as “nonunified plural beings, ignoring and
deluding
ourselves as to what we are and do, moved and shaped by forces over
which we
have no control” (Schwabb, 1989; p. xxxiv). However, Frank (1989)
argues that
what these thinkers identify and emphasize - the ‘codes’ and ‘rules’
that
constitute language, tradition, collective meaning, and the like - do
not give
meaning to the record of writing and human things and signs and
symbols, only
the individual does. These things have no meaning without an individual
giving
them meaning; we do not have our existence, our subjective experience in them -
they being over and above us - but through
them. We construct meaning
and our
meaning making is unique. Thus, Frank argues that it is the individual
as a
creative centre of meaning making who is central and cannot be disposed
of;
though, of course, meaning is arrived at in contexts where the meanings
of
others cannot be ignored. As to the loss of the individual he also
asks, in a
lighter vein, whether we are wise in too easily throwing out the idea
of the
individual as agent, when
pressures already exist in advanced
technological
society, in multinational corporatisation and cultural
uni-dimensionalisation,
to do that job quite satisfactorily?
In elaborating Frank’s (1989) ideas
for personal construct psychology Warren (2000) also noted that one of
the
seminal thinkers for postmodern ideas, Michel Foucault, himself moved
to a
position that had surprised even his own followers when he suggested
that he
had concentrated too much on ‘power’ at the expense of the scope
individuals
had to interpret and resist. That is, in his The Subject and Power,
Foucault
(1982) noted:
Power is exercised only
over free
subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individual
or
collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in
which
several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments,
may be
realised. ... At the very heart of the power relationship, and
constantly
provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence
of
freedom (1982, p. 790).
This apparent turn around was
explained by one Foucault commentator (O’Farrell, 1989), as Foucault
accepting
that he had largely ignored individual
intentions, resistance and the
like,
only later going on to refine his position to embrace other aspects of
life.
That refinement involved his elaboration of the ‘field of experience’
in which
people live as composed of three axes
- truth, power, individual
conduct - and
the need to address all three, not just power, as his work had
basically done
to that time.
Frank’s work, then, still not fully
digested in social theory generally, provides a significant challenge
to social
constructionism. More importantly, it attempts a compromise that finds
in hermeneutics - which was
always centrally concerned with the contexts
of our
individual
lives - a way to give due recognition to both the social and the
psychological,
and in dynamic interaction. In some instances, the social will be more
significant and an individual’s conduct best understood as a mere
expression of
their place and times; in others, the psychological will be more
significant.
In Barth’s (1982) account of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics - which
hermeneutics, as noted, Frank resurrected for his own argument toward
the
compromise he was trying to effect - he provides an example of where
the
broader social and the narrower psychological would, respectively, take
on
significance. In interpreting an historical text, for example, the
social would
be vital; in understanding a letter to a loved-one from a soldier at
the war
front, the psychological would be more salient. In both cases, though,
the
other perspective could not be ignored for a full understanding.
Better
Social-Psychological
Accounts of Psychological Life?
It has been previously suggested
that social constructionism advances a position in relation to
psychological
life that Pragmatism might better illuminate (Warren,
1997). That
suggestion came in the context of attempting to re-establish the
anarcho-psychological tradition of thought in a context where the
common wisdom
was hailing the ‘death’ or the ‘decentring’ of the subject; that is, of
the agentic
self. By way of challenging the common wisdom, the ideas of the
(perhaps)
individualist anarchist, Max Stirner, were reviewed and some criticism
of
neo-structuralism outlined. In addition, the scope of Pragmatism was
also noted
by way of offering a position that gave a central place to ‘the
social’, yet
without loss of the individual. That scope was succinctly expressed in
a paper
by Colapietro (1990). It is the second aspect that is presently more
useful to
recall.
Colapietro (1990) argued that what
is in the so-called ‘French account’ of the subject is already and,
importantly, better contained within Pragmatism. In Pragmatism, the
agentic
self is seen as, essentially, immersed in social contexts and subjected
to structures
and structurings but remains nonetheless a unique ‘centre of action’.
The
‘discourses’ to which each of us are subjected are just another form of
communal experience and Pragmatism was always keen to give due weight
to both
the communal experiences and the ‘individual livedness’ of everyday
life. He
quotes from Dewey's Experience and
Nature to emphasize a point to which
we will
return:
Philosophers have
exhibited proper
ingenuity in pointing holes in the beliefs of common sense, but they
have also
displayed improper ingenuity in ignoring the empirical things every one
has;
the things that so denote themselves [in our lived practical
experience] that
they have to be dealt with. (Colapietro, 1990, p. 651, citing
Dewey)
Pragmatism takes significant
account one’s ‘location’ or ‘grounding’ in the lived-ness of life as a
core feature
of its articulation of an account of our social and our psychological
functioning. Moreover, and most importantly here, it also specifically
addresses
the psychological dimension;
Dewey’s work, for example was concerned
with
thinking, problem solving, creative processes, teaching and learning.
Importantly, for Dewey (1916/1966) education was the significant domain
of
these last activities - essentially an activity of interaction,
communication,
clashes of discourses and so on - and philosophy itself was secondary,
defined
as “the general theory of education”
(p.328). Indeed, and pertinent
here in
regard to the domain of praxis that personal construct psychology has
been
argued to highlight (Warren, 2002): “The educational point of view
enables one
to envisage the philosophic problems where they arise and thrive, where
they
are at home, and where acceptance or rejection makes a difference in
practice”
(p. 328).
To be sure, Pragmatism is not
without its own philosophical difficulties. However, in its original
formulation
as a theory of knowledge, later refinements to bring out more clearly
the
essential focus on the ‘life world’ that it shares with Phenomenology -
particularly
but not only in its hermeneutic turn
- and in neo-Pragmatism, there is
a rich
tradition on one hand, and one which directly focuses on ‘the
psychological’,
on the other. Further, what is here elaborated in terms of Dewey’s
philosophy
and psychology can be equally done from the more specifically
social-psychological
with reference to the work of Mead (Butt, 2001). Again, social
constructionism
is not blind to these contributions and recognizes a certain
congeniality with
them; even though it may be Mead rather than Dewey who is found the
better
company.
A Miscellany
of Problem Matters for
Social Constructionism
Finally, our quote from Dewey
serves to remind us of the need to take note of a number of dimensions
of lived
experience with which the individual has to deal. It reminds us also of
how
one’s own, personal understanding seems poorly served by even the
fullest account
of social forces, language and discourse structurings, class pressures,
and the
like that may well impact on one, but questioningly do so ‘without
remainder’.
Examples are obvious, like one’s experience of death, of bereavement,
of
chronic illness, of personal crisis, even of significant change in
one’s life.
These types of experience point to our personal vulnerability, our
fragility,
and our sense of impermanence. Similarly with the personal experience
of aging,
perhaps of decreasing personal efficacy and increasing dependence, an
experience the anxiety in relation to which hardly seems assuaged by
looking to
the ‘big picture’. Again, there is the experience of being an
‘outsider’ in
one’s own society, or in one’s own culture, or one’s own world; the
personal experiences
of a person of colour in a white society, of the aged or disabled in a
culture
of youth and narcissism. More generally, there is the alleged
phenomenon of a
being who has lost interest in Being, in a world where we are entrapped
by
particular things of the world and their demands of us (Heidegger,
1977).
Again, social constructionism is not insensitive to some of these
experiences,
and even Gergen (1995, p. 98) recognizes personal disgust and fear, or
at least
a ‘shudder’, when he contemplates some of the ideas in Hitler’s Mein
Kampf.
All of these last situations and
events highlight fields of experience that are excruciatingly
personally
meaningful. However these experiences might be encapsulated in an
account of
generalities of social class or ethnicity or discourses of this or that
role we
fill, whatever group meanings might be its ground, it remains the
personal figure that in
certain situations or contexts will be more
critical. Such a
situation
or context, of course, is psychology, and, especially, therapy. One
might be
told that he or she is deluded in thinking that they are an agentic
self, have
a ‘self’, or have some dimension of their being outside the various
layers of
that being derived from their social class, culture, group, gender,
biography,
an so on. Yet, where does such a delusion live or exist – and, in any
case,
does the individual care?
THE ‘SOCIAL’ IN PERSONAL
CONSTRUCT
PSYCHOLOGY
There is a second way to come at
the question that animates this paper. This here involves a recall of
what personal
construct psychology says about the relationship between the individual
and
‘the social’.
What does personal construct
psychology envision the individual doing? First, like a scientist,
forming constructs
with which to make sense of the world. Then, the individual tests those
constructs. In a solipsistic world there would be no need to test one’s
constructs:
indeed we might wonder at the process of forming them in the first
place! But
in all other worlds with which we are familiar, the individual attempts
to
square his or her meaning with that of another, or others, of his or
her
species. That activity in personal construct psychology is an activity
of validating
one’s constructs, and in so far as one works through certain cycles in
this
process, one is said to be ‘mentally well’ or optimally psychologically
functioning. The last point aside, what is built firmly into the
theory
is this
notion that one goes to one’s social context to validate one’s
construing.
Moreover, from the outset, Kelly
(1955/1991) acknowledged that the individual’s constructs would find a
significant
origin in that individual’s micro and macro social contexts; the person
is
always embedded - just as
Butt (1998) reminds us that the person is
also embodied.
Thus, Kelly (1955/1991) notes the significance of studying the culture
in which
a person has grown in order to fully understand the constructs being
employed.
At the same time, he exposes the danger of stereotyping that can occur
when we
too readily and simplistically relate the construct systems of a series
of individuals
from a particular social or cultural context, to our own culture.
Importantly, however, if someone is
to be understood as a person, then we must “neither ignore the cultural
expectations under which they have validated their constructs ... nor
make the
mistake of focusing on the group constructs to the exclusion of the
personal
constructs of each” person (1955/1991, I, p.181/p. 126-7). As he
observes of
‘Ronald Barrett’: while his culture might suggest that on a moonlit
night he
would be more interested in the potential activity in the back seat of
a parked
car with someone who might very reasonably be construed as ‘willing’
his
personal construing suggests that he would more likely be forming
hypotheses as
to what was happening under the bonnet! (Kelly, 1955/1991, I, p. 340/
p.
253-4).
Clearly, from its original
formulation, personal construct psychology has seen the person as
embedded.
Jones (1971) saw this early on, and a string of others have elaborated
the
significance of social context if which the person construes events and
tests
those constructions. Individuals were never seen as isolated from their
lived
social experience. This is apparent from the beginning in Kelly’s
(1955/1991)
original formulation. It is apparent also in elaborations since; for
example,
in Butt, (1996, 2000), in Kalekin-Fishman and Walker
(1996), in
Davidson and Reser (1996), in Epting et al (1996), in Willutzki and
Duda
(1996), in Scheer (2000). And, indeed, it is in that philosophy which
can be
read between the lines of personal construct psychology, that is
Dewey’s version
of Pragmatism (Warren, 1998).
In Barbu’s (1956) discussion of the
types of personality associated with, respectively, democratic and
totalitarian
social organization, he makes a point that is relevant to the matter in
focus
in this paper. This is that it is not possible, nor is it particularly
helpful,
to answer the question “whether a democratic personality creates a
democratic
culture-pattern, or a democratic culture pattern creates a democratic
personality” (p. 106). Perhaps there is a lesson in this observation
for the
issues raised between social constructionism and personal construct
psychology?
And, that lesson is usefully taken from a ‘searchlight analogy’ given
by
Carroll (1974), to be noted by way of our conclusion.
CONCLUSION
The conclusion at this point is but
a reserved one. This follows the conclusion which emerges from one
debate
between a broadly Marxist and a broadly anarchist position. This drew
out the
essentially sociological argument
of the Marxists and the essentially existential
arguments of the anarchists. It was this: that the
issues being raised
by exponents
of each perspective were those that their particular illumination of
the same
field revealed. This is understood using the analogy suggested by
Carroll
(1974) to give due credit to both the sociological perspective
elaborated by
Marx and his heirs, and the existential perspective elaborated by those
who
found greater fascination in the subtle nuances of human psychological
functioning.
That analogy was of two searchlights illuminating the same field, but
from
different angles. As Carroll (1974, p. 131) says, their two standpoints
do not
communicate; they direct searchlights whose fields of illumination are
rarely
intersecting. We might say in the spirit of this analogy that the one
was
highlighting the overall game, identifying its form, its movement, the
application and breaches of its rules. The other showed-up brilliant
individual
moves and plays, feats of stamina, strength or endurance, of error and
half-hearted plays or defence that might, for example, interest a
‘talent
scout’ more than a supporter of either team. Neither was more correct
than the
other; they merely focused different things.
So was it with the Marxists and the
anarchists and, later, the Existentialists. So may it be with social
constructionism
and personal constructivism?
Personal construct psychology and
social constructionism, taken together as complimentary, make a
formidable
assault on the problem of understanding our psychological and
sociological life
- our psycho-social life. Separately, they are limited in the depth of
the
insights they can offer. Personal construct psychology is a Psychology,
not a
Philosophy, and it has its own range of convenience and its focus of
convenience.
But that range has always
included our social life and that focus
has
always
envisaged that a person who was not functioning optimally would find
their
optimal functioning only in a social context. Moreover, there is an
argument
for accepting that it was a particular type or style of social context
that underlay
the theory of personal constructs; that is, an egalitarian social
context
(Warren, 1996), not as a normative judgement but as an inherent
assumption of
the theory (akin to Hegel’s idea of ‘love’ in his ethical theory)
.
Is there, then, a ‘problem’ between
social constructionism and personal constructivism? Present
observations
suggest not. But if there is, it is not one the resolution of which
would yet
suggest we abandon personal construct psychology.
As a final ‘bold conjecture’ in the
present context – and at the risk of plagiarizing myself - it is of
value to
reiterate some concluding observations from an account of the debate
between
Marx and the philosopher of egoism, Max Stirner (Warren, 1997). There,
the
different positions were framed in terms of the four fundamental
questions of
philosophy as Immanuel Kant saw them: What can I know? What ought I do?
What
can I hope? What is Man? Thus a perspective that attempts to give
credit to
both positions might say as follows. First, I can know what the
particular set
of forces constituting the ‘thesis of
my times’ allow. But its ‘I’ who
knows
and only when that knowledge is significant for me will it be mine,
only when
it is personal; though, of
course, in this vein (mined by both Hegel
and Marx)
enough ‘personals’ will combine to generate social movements and forces
that
express an anti-thesis that challenges the dominant discourse. Second,
my
conduct will derive from the material conditions under which I live and
the
moral imperatives my historical times place on me. But, as history
shows as
much as does biography, I can see through moral imperatives, accept or
reject
them; why else the lengths to which the dominant forces in society have
to go
to ensure conformity? Third, my future - as is my life - is short and
only the
present is really meaning-full; though I too easily forget this,
especially
when distracted by other people’s demands of me. But, when I grieve or
I am
lonely or frightened or in pain or facing my own aging and death, then
I recall
the significance of the intense present and the excruciatingly
personal. And,
fourthly, while I may find some interest in the nature of Humankind
(Man), even
in what ‘these men’ (Men) might do or think, I find little consolation
in my sameness,
especially when I am reminded of the intense present in the types of
experiences
just listed, and thereby of my difference.
So, not ‘What is Man’, nor
‘What do
men do?’, but ‘Who is man?’ is of more interest, and the answer is ‘I’.
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ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Bill Warren,
Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School
of Education, University of Newcastle, Australia, where he teaches
Philosophy.
He is also a Clinical Psychologist in active practice, including an
Honorary
appointment at the HAHS Centre for Psychotherapy in Newcastle. While he
has published
PCP empirical research (for example, psychology of death, death
outlooks in
anorexia nervosa, trainee teacher construing) his primary interest has
been in
the philosophical and theoretical dimensions of PCP. This last interest
has
been expressed in numerous papers and conference presentations, most
significantly in his 'Philosophical Dimensions of Personal Construct
Psychology'
(Routledge, 1998). E-mail: William.Warren@newcastle.edu.au
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REFERENCE
Warren, B.
(2004). Construing
constructionism: some reflections on the tension between PCP and social
constructionism. Personal Construct
Theory & Practice, 1, 34-44.
(Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp04/warren04.html)
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Received: 20 April 2004 - Accepted: 10 May 2004 -
Published: 31 May 2004 |
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