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Remembering Fay Fransella
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I first came across the work of George
Kelly when I was training as a Counsellor in 1976. I found his ideas exciting
and came across the book ‘Inquiring Man’ written by Don Bannister and Fay
Fransella which I read avidly. I could not forget such names and I was told
that these two people (Don and Fay) were the British people who were
introducing Kelly’s ideas to people in the UK. We did a mini repgrid on my
course and for the first time some interesting insights about people in my life
came to light. It was extraordinary how this simple activity made me rethink a
lot of the things that seemed to be going wrong in my life at that time.
The following year I had some time off work
ill. I saw an advertisement for an introductory course in Personal Construct
Psychology led by Fay Fransella at the Royal Free Hospital in London. I
telephoned Fay to find out more about the course and she invited me to apply by
writing a character sketch of myself in the third person – following what I later
learned were Kelly’s suggestions for finding out more about a person by asking
them and being credulous about what they say. This was a powerful moment for me
as it meant that I had become one of what I now know to be a very large
community of people worldwide who have found Kelly’s ideas inspirational. So I
did my training with Fay and an interesting group of people who later became my
friends and colleagues. These included Peggy Dalton, Cassie Cooper, and later
Gavin Dunnett. When we finished our introductory course we all wanted to
continue learning more about Personal Construct Psychology and Fay agreed to
continue developing our interest from her home in Chelsea. This further
training turned into the Advanced Diploma of Personal Construct Psychology. We
all enjoyed our weekly meetings and learned so much from Fay and each other.
Fay had been developing ideas of her own at
this point and before long she and her husband Roy had bought premises in
Pimlico – 132 Warwick Way where the ground floor and basement became the Centre
for Personal Construct Psychology and Fay and Roy lived on the upper floors. I
think our first computer was on the landing between the ground and first
floors! Peggy Dalton joined Fay immediately at the Centre but before long Fay invited
me to become their ‘Director of Education and Training’. I don’t know how I had
the nerve to agree to undertake such a grad sounding job since this would mean
leaving my job as Student Counsellor in Wandsworth and also selling my home in
Richmond, Surrey.
Fay’s interest in growing a school for PCP
was compelling and I think we felt like pioneers hoping to introduce these
novel ideas to others. At that time most of us were psychologists, or
therapists or speech therapists. But soon people from other backgrounds became
interested and after one of the workshops we ran our market research arm
developed. We were invited to do a massive piece of research to help a major
airline find out how to please their customers better. Fay, apparently
confidently, agreed that we would do this piece of work and fortunately she was
able to call on other colleagues to help with the analysis of data which was
required. So our small team of workers just got on with the work of
interviewing quite a lot of people using personal construct frameworks for our
inquiries. Joyce Watson had also joined the Centre at this time as a
psychologist and we worked very hard to complete this first piece of
organisational work. One of the major findings was that passenger contact staff
really preferred to work with “difficult” passengers rather than being obliged
to treat them all equally. From this particular piece of information the
airline launched their ‘Putting People First’ programme involving large numbers
of their staff. We offered a back up counselling service to many of them
following the research. Other organisations became interested and market
research and organisational development became part of the Centre’s portfolio.
Fay’s energy and enthusiasm for this work
was remarkable and her effort unstinting. Setting up a Centre in central London
was a costly business and the main focus of our work – therapy and counselling
and education – was not lucrative enough to support the building and premises
and the few staff we had. So the organisational work became particularly
important. Fay took many financial risks to keep it all going; she had left her
job as Reader at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine by this time but
she was very keen to make Personal Construct Psychology accessible to many more
people.
What I am trying to capture is the sense of
excitement, innovation and adventure that was around. It was lovely to work
with people who came on our courses and workshops and many people now really
well known in the PCP world came to the Centre to wish Fay well and to meet the
rest of us working with her. Don Bannister was closely involved and I was lucky
to have him as my mentor during my own training. Tom Ravenette spent time with us.
Spence McWilliams came on sabbatical and worked with us. Finn Tschudi brought
groups of students from Norway to our workshops and I met Franz Epting, Bob and
Greg Neimeyer when they came from the USA. Dorothy Rowe ran workshops for us on
‘Depression’ in the early days of her published work on many aspects of
psychological wellness. And we went to the international congresses. I remember
being very impressed when I met the authors there of so many of the papers in ‘New
Perspectives in Personal Construct Psychology’. People in this international
community became our friends.
I left the Centre in 1986 when I had the
opportunity to take myself and my work in personal construct psychology to a
job in the National Health Service in Yorkshire. The focus of this job was
management development initially for doctors and later for many other people in
the NHS. I was lucky to be appointed to a job there which gave me the
opportunity to use PCP as the background to research I undertook to identify
what needed to be done. I was sad to leave London and the Centre but glad to
have the opportunity to use PCP in a wider context. Fay was very helpful to me
in her advice and her willingness to come to Yorkshire sometimes to meet some
of the people I worked with there.
Fay herself made the decision later on to
run the Centre in a more virtual way and she and more recently Nick Reed who
eventually became the Director of the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology
at the University of Hertfordshire ran distance learning courses from Fay’s
home in Falmouth and Nick’s home in Kent using a more electronic method of
working. Peggy Dalton with Ray Evans set up an arm’s length organisation, the
Personal Construct Psychology Association, who continued to run the foundation
and advanced diploma courses through to the present day. These were all
supported by the people who had studied originally at the Centre in London.
I myself kept in touch by establishing a bi-monthly
group meeting of what has come to be known as the Northern PCP Research group
and we have now been meeting for 22 years up here in Yorkshire. Nick Reed comes
to these meetings and in this way we continue to pursue the interest we have
all had in Personal Construct Psychology and the work of George Kelly.
Without Fay none of this would have
happened and we shall all miss her very much indeed. She was truly
inspirational.
Helen Jones, York (UK)
January 26, 2011.
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REFERENCE
Jones, H. (2011). Remembering Fay Fransella
Personal Construct Theory &
Practice, 8, 5-6.
(Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp11/jones-fransella11.html)
Contact: helen.jo@sky.com
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Received: 18 March 2011 – Accepted: 18 March 2011 –
Published: 25 March 2011 |
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