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GETTING TO
OHIO STATE AND TO GEORGE A. KELLY
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Al
Landfield
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Lincoln,
Nebraska, USA |
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Forty-two
years after the death of Professor George Kelly, I am recording
personal
memories of him, my major research professor at Ohio State University
(OSU). I
also am describing my journey to OSU. This manuscript documents parts
of my own
life and also describes a man who contributed so much to my
professional
career. I completed my Masters and Doctoral research under his
direction. I
also served as his Graduate Assistant during the second semester of my
third
graduate year.
I am
including a second section in which I describe my views about the early
developments of Professor Kelly's Personal Construct Psychology (PCP).
Putting PCP
into my own words, I believe that human beings differ from one another
at
birth. I believe that stimuli are filtered through cognitive structures
that
exist at birth. I reject the assumption made by the behaviorist, John
B.
Watson, that we are born with white slates on which stimuli write. I
believe
that human beings think and create. In short, I do not believe that the
external stimulus is king. I believe that any event can be viewed in
more than
one way. I think that George Kelly's use of the “personal scientist” as
the
root metaphor for his theory was novel and a valid way of understanding
human
motivation.
I accept
the philosophical assumption called the Reflexivity of Theory. If a
psychological theory includes all human beings, one should be able to
consider
the behavior of the theorist within his own theory (Oliver &
Landfield, Journal of Individual Psychology,
1962,
18, 114-121). This article was reprinted in the International
Journal of General Semantics. In other words, one
should at least try to understand the behavior of George Kelly within
his own theory.
I now begin
with my own educational history. I was a first semester student at
Muskingum
College, a small Liberal Arts school located in central Ohio. I was
drafted into
the Army after one semester and sent to Fort McClelland, Alabama for
four months
of infantry training. I then was sent to Auburn University, then known
as Alabama
Polytechnic. There, I completed two semesters of basic Engineering
before the
program closed. Having received Infantry Training, I ended up in an
Infantry
unit in France.
My military
experience ended in a deep and muddy hole located in a forest. Snow was
a foot
deep. I was wet and cold. I lacked the proper foot ware needed for such
conditions.
Battalion Aid diagnosed my problem as Trench Foot. When a Medic cut the
shoes
from my feet, they swelled to twice their normal size. Eventually, I
was placed
in a hospital in Paris for one week.
There,
two surgeons inspected my feet each morning. The younger surgeon wanted
to
amputate several toes. The older surgeon wanted to wait. His position
prevailed
and I was flown to a hospital in England. For many weeks, I laid flat
on my
back, my feet propped up on a large pillow. I was given Codeine around
the
clock.
Finally, I
was placed in a wheel chair and taken to a library with the fancy name
of USAFI
or the United States Armed Forces Institute. I was introduced to a
librarian who
asked me if I had ever read about philosophy. I said, “No.” He gave me
a book
that described several systems of ideas. After reading this book, I
returned to
the library and asked this librarian, “How can you prove which one is
best?” He
gave me a book on Industrial Psychology. I read about the famous
Hawthorne
study in which lighting was increased on some production lines; lowered
on
others. Nothing was done on the control lines. Production increased
even on
lines with lowered wattage. I was impressed. Doing something for
workers, even
something ridiculous, could prove better than doing nothing. I now was
developing a dual interest in philosophy and science, an interest that
carried
over to my later years.
When I was
able to walk short distances, I was taken by hospital ship to a port
near North
Carolina. I was placed in a Rehab hospital. There, I had the
opportunity to see
both the Duke and North Carolina campuses. I loved the natural beauty
of Chapel
Hill and decided to apply for admission to the University of North
Carolina. I
needed the warmer climate because of my feet. I did not know that this
choice would
lead me to Ohio State University.
My next
step was to decide how best to finance my further education. I had two
choices.
I could opt for education under the GI Bill. That would give me thirty
months
of education. However, since I had a disability, I could apply for
education
under Public Law 16. That meant that I would need to undergo a full day
of
psychological evaluation. I drove to the Rochester Institute of
Technology for
Psychological testing. I experienced an exhausting day during which I
developed
a dim view of Psychologists. Late in the day, my tested findings were
reviewed.
I had high scores in the area of Engineering. However, my interests and
values
did not match those of successful Engineers. My interests and values
were a
perfect match for Psychology. That was crazy. The psychologist
recommended that
I take at least one Psychology course at Chapel Hill. My dim view of
this man
changed when he recommended that I receive the full forty-eight months
of
education.
When I
enrolled at the University I decided to take one psychology course. The
Professor who taught this beginning course and a lab was Dr. John
Frederick
Dashiel. He was a dynamic lecturer, maybe because he was partly deaf.
He talked
excitedly about the new frontiers of Psychology. He used baseball
stories from
his short professional baseball career to illustrate certain ideas. All
the
students loved the guy. In the lab, he sometimes stood behind my lab
desk and
said, “That is very good Mr. Landfield.” Eventually, I decided on a
Psychology
major. Of some interest to me was the fact that Dr. Dashiel was one of
the
early Presidents of the American Psychological Association. Also, of
great interest,
was the fact that even as he “ran rats,” he was curious about all
aspects of
Psychology. He was a General Psychologist. In my final year at Chapel
Hill, I
asked Dr. Dashiel what one does with an undergraduate degree in
Psychology. He
looked at me for a moment, then said, “You attend Graduate School and
obtain a
Ph.D. There is no real future for anyone without that degree.”
I now had
twenty-four months of education available to me. I asked him where I
should go.
He replied that the real action in Psychology was at Ohio State. So, I
said, I
want to attend Ohio State. He smiled and told me to apply to the
Chairman of
the Department at OSU, Dr. Burtt. Apparently, they were personal
friends.
I got
married and temporally lived in her father's summer Cottage on Cheat
Lake in
West Virginia. Finally, I received a letter from Dr. Burtt saying that
I had
been accepted. We packed up and my father-in-law drove us to Columbus,
Ohio.
Two days before our departure, I received another letter, this time
from the
Graduate School, stating that my application had been rejected. Now it
made
common sense to call Dr. Burtt. Instead, I believed that there was a
clerical
error. We moved to Ohio. When I talked with Dr.Burtt, I was informed
that it was
not a clerical error. A new Admissions Committee had overturned Dr.
Burtt's
decision.
When I
asked Dr. Burtt what I should do, he replied that I should take the
Ohio State
Psychological Exam, known as the OSPE. It was a general aptitude test.
When I
obtained a hundred percentile on the exam, I was admitted to the
Graduate
School and to the Department. When
I
began my graduate work at OSU, I wanted to become a General
Psychologist like
my undergraduate Professor at the University of North Carolina. When I
told Dr.
Burtt that I wanted to become a General Psychologist, he replied,
“There is no
such animal as a General Psychologist. That was in the past. Now, you
have to specialize.”
I asked him about the specialties at OSU. He told me that I should talk
with
the heads of the different programs. Then he added that many of the
program
heads were still on vacation. However, Dr. George Kelly was in his
office that morning.
He called him. Minutes later, I knocked on the door of Dr. Kelly's
Office. A short,
rotund, smiling man with an Irish face greeted me. “Come in Mr.
Landfield, have
a seat.” He sat down opposite me and leaned forward. “Mr. Landfield,
what do you
think Psychology is all about?” I responded with something about what I
had
learned at North Carolina. He swiveled his chair to the window. Then,
he
swiveled back and leaned forward. “That is all very interesting. Many
Psychologists believe in what you have said. However, there are other
ways to
look at all of that.”
The light
bulb went on for me. I knew at that moment that I had to know more
about this
man and his thinking. I decided at that moment to major in Clinical
Psychology
as a way of knowing more about those new ideas.
Dr. Kelly
told me about the Research Meetings that would be held each week for
eight
weeks. Students would present their research idea for a Masters Thesis.
If
students liked a particular idea, they would vote the presenter out of
the remaining
meetings. Students reacted to this requirement in different ways. My
reaction
was to accept the challenge. If I couldn't do it, I didn't belong in
the
program. Some students left the program. One student, a new
acquaintance of mine,
shifted to graduate work in Social Administration. I was voted out in
the
fourth week. I had stumbled onto a study in which a researcher had
correlated
child delinquency with overstatement. It made no sense to me that
delinquency
caused overstatement. I proposed that children overstate in areas of
unfulfilled need. I did find evidence for this hypothesis. This study
was not
done within Personal Construct Psychology. I had no knowledge of it
then. Only
later did I learn about it in my third year of graduate study as I read
mimeographed copies of the first drafts of the Kelly theory.
The third
year, I ran out of government money. To help me financially, I was
given a
Graduate Assistantship for two Semesters. First, I was assigned to Dr.
Boyd
McCandless. He asked me to punch hundreds of IBM cards. The second
semester, I
was assigned to Dr. Kelly. When I asked him about my duties, he
replied, “Oh,
you might dust my books once in a while.” He smiled.
One
afternoon, I was working late in the secretarial office outside Dr.
Kelly's
office. I was coming up with some research ideas. I looked up when Dr.
Kelly
was leaving his office. Impulsively, I asked him if he could listen for
several
minutes to a research idea. He agreed to my request and sat on the edge
of my work
table. Quickly, I summarized my thoughts. He responded with the
following statement:
“Mr. Landfield, I don't follow all that you are saying, but I see the
wheels
going around. What is most important are those wheels going around.” He
departed. He could
have easily cut me down and made me
feel like an idiot. I have known professors who would delight in having
that
kind of opportunity. Kelly supported my intention. Kelly did not give
me many
words of support during those years at OSU. However, when he did, his
comments
made a critical difference in my life. He always treated me with
respect in his
formal way.
Shifting to
a period about ten years after my departure from OSU, when I was a
Professor at
the University of Missouri, Dr. Kelly was invited to speak at the
University. I
had breakfast with him at his hotel. I began our conversation by
talking about
my friend Professor Frank Shaw who died suddenly at the age of
forty-three.
Kelly had met him once and Frank had written to him about the
possibility of
encouraging a subject to attempt a reconciliation of the two poles of a
Personal Construct. Frank was writing a theory he called Reconciliation
Theory.
When I stated that Frank was the type of guy that would jump off our
planet
just to see what was out there, Kelly responded with. “Al, I have been
under
threat all my life.” He later pointed out why he did not like Frank's
idea of reconciliation.
He equated it with the work of the Philosopher Hegel. Hegel introduced
the
sequence of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. George felt that Hegel's
idea
would end up with a final synthesis in the autocratic German State.
Later, I
asked my friend Don Oliver, a Professor of Philosophy, about Kelly's
comment.
Don, who read Hegel in German, stated that George was wrong. I wish I
could
have put the two men together.
I saw
another face of George Kelly, whom I now called George, at a
Psychological
conference in Chicago. He saw me alone in a hotel corridor and invited
me to accompany
him to a Clam and Oyster bar in the basement of the hotel. He was very
proud of
the fact that he could locate this bar from anyplace in the hotel.
Several
years later, I became concerned about my finances. I applied for a
Chairman
position at a University in another State. I called George and asked if
he
would give me a recommendation. He said that he could give me a good
one.
However, after I returned from a trip to this
University, I received a waiting
letter from him. I pulled out a three page letter from the envelope. He
had
typed it himself. Letters from George usually were more formal. This
letter was
most personal. He was worried that I would take the job. He gave me a
dozen reasons
why it would be a mistake. He was emotional in ways that I could not
have
predicted. I was seeing another face of George Kelly in relation to me.
Returning
to my earlier years at OSU, I want to comment on how it can make a
difference
in understanding George Kelly if you were on his research team during
those
four years when he was Director of Clinical Training. Dr. Kelly told
his
research students about his problem with students who hung around OSU
for a
dozen years with no plans to finish their Doctoral work. Dr. Kelly took
on the unpleasant
task of eliminating those with no plans for completion. I could
understand why
he did this. However, students who did not know Dr. Kelly when he was
Director of
Clinical Training, tended to treat this information negatively. We all
know
about rumors. My maternal grandmother had her own take on rumors: “Take
them
with a grain of salt.”
I must
agree that Dr. Kelly could be tough in his administrative role. For
example,
each semester, he called in clinical students and asked them about
their
progress in the program. He also asked them to state target dates for
further
progress. If students were missing their target dates, I am sure they
felt
uncomfortable. Since I was married with limited financial resources, I
had to
make rapid progress on my Doctoral studies.
Another
example of his toughness came late the second year. I had tested a
child whose
level of intelligence was very low. It was not a complex case, and I
wrote a
good report. Unfortunately, it was Friday afternoon when I received a
call from
a physician who was seeing the boy. The parents were coming to Columbus
from a
distance. He needed the information now. I tried to contact my Clinic
supervisor for approval and could not locate him. I should have tried
other
Professors to give approval for sending the information to this
physician.
Using my common sense rather my clinical sense, I sent the information
without
an approval. Monday, Kelly called me into his office and reamed me out.
He said
I had acted in an unprofessional manner. I should have tried to get
approval from
another staff member. For example, I could have called him at his home.
That
was my first lesson in professional ethics.
Moving
forward to the early years when I was a Professor at the University of
Missouri, twice Dr. Kelly called me. The first time, he told me about
Don Bannister,
from England, a visitor at OSU. Would I and my wife be able to
entertain Don
and his wife, Linda. I said that we could. This was my introduction to
Dr. Don Bannister,
an external research member of the British Medical Research Council.
A year
later, Dr. Kelly again called me. Would I and my wife entertain Han
Bonarius
and his wife Marja. Han was working on his Doctoral at the University
of
Groningen, the Netherlands. Now I had met two men who would play
important
roles in my life and in the early history of PCP.
It was
1965. I decided to take a sabbatical. I was interested in London and
Don
Bannister. Don and his friend, Miller Mair, would sponsor my sabbatical
at a
unit of the University of London. Late in 1966, my family traveled to
London.
Don and Miller met us at our boat dock. They had rented a large station
wagon,
called a Shooting Break. Most of our luggage was strapped to the top of
the
wagon. They took us to a small bed and breakfast hotel in London. After
ten
days, Don and Miller collected us and took us to our flat they had
arranged
for. This flat was close to Miller's townhouse. Don had arranged a car
rental
for me and Miller had arranged for school enrollment for our two
children.
It was in
London that I met Dr. Fay Fransella who became a leader in the PCP
movement in
Great Britain after Don's death. I also met Neil Warren, a lecturer at
Brunel University, London.
I will never forget sitting in on a meeting of the Kelly Club hosted by
Fay
Fransella. Don, Miller, Neil, and Phillida Salmon were present at this
meeting.
Dr. Salmon later wrote an important book in Developmental Psychology.
I became
well acquainted with Neil Warren. One day, Neil invited me to visit
Brunel
University. Late that afternoon, Neil pulled a letter from his file. “I
received this letter from George Kelly directly after his visit to
London in
1964. He participated in the Symposium on PCP. As you know, I chaired
that
Symposium. I have not shown this letter to anyone. Having come to know
you, I
can trust your opinion about this letter. Read it. Give me your
opinion. I then
will give you my opinion.”
My comment: “I think after George reached New York,
he stayed overnight. He rented a typewriter and wrote most of the
evening. His
review of a problem childhood is painful to read. His stress must have
been
great to share it with someone he knew only a short time. He showed
good
judgment in trusting you. You also were Chair of the Symposium and
could assess
his distress objectively. He felt he was a failure and the Symposium
was a
failure. I remember Kelly saying that if British scholars liked his
theory, it
would become important in Psychology. George is miserable about his
failure and
has to share it with someone he trusts. He says you may show the letter
to others
after his death. To show the letter to me must have been difficult. The
letter
upset you and you had to share it with someone.” “Neil responded, “That
reflects my own analysis. The tragedy is that George did well and
people liked
him. The Symposium was well received. As for the letter, I don't want
anyone
else to see it. The letter could be misunderstood.”
Neil never
showed this letter to anyone else and later destroyed it. I
corresponded with
an administrator of his University after Neil's death. The letter could
not be
found. This letter is important in that often George tended to downplay
the
importance of his theory. This letter clearly showed that the theory
was at the
core of his own Construct System.
Others had
heard him talk about the theory as though it was just another theory.
Professor
Ansbacher, Editor of the Journal of Individual Psychology, had heard
him do this.
When Professor Ansbacher received copies of the Oliver &
Landfield article,
referred to earlier, he sent a copy to George whom he said he knew
well. In
Kelly's letter of response to Ansbacher's letter, he again downplayed
the
importance of his theory. This was ridiculous to Ansbacher who wrote
about
these communications with Kelly in a letter to me about a second
manuscript on
Reflexivity of Theory.
Following
the
death of Dr. Kelly in 1967, I wrote to Mrs. Kelly. I explained to her
that I
had written to the Editor of Psychological Abstracts, asking that
Personal
Construct Theory and Personal Construct be coded in the Journal. My
request was
rejected. I explained to Mrs. Kelly the idea of starting a Clearing
House, a
Library, where references would be sent. At the end of each year, these
references
would be distributed to the Members of the Clearing House. I then asked
Mrs.
Kelly if she could share the Magpie List of people to whom George sent
an unpublished
paper each year. Mrs. Kelly sent the list. I sent a letter to people on
this
list, asking if they wanted to participate in this Reference Library.
About one
third stated that their interest was more in George than his theory.
However,
even these people said that it sounded like a good idea. We began with
about
sixty members. Within several years, the list had expanded to about two
hundred,
representing twenty-four countries.
Following
our first International Conference (1975), now called a Congress, the
Clearing
House annual letter would be used to announce the site of the next
International
Congress. Once the Congress had been established, it no longer was
mercenary to
use the list for this purpose.
In 1974,
Dr. David Levine, Chair of the Department of Psychology at the
University of
Nebraska, asked me to take the responsibility for a Nebraska Symposium
on PCP.
The Nebraska Symposium is sponsored each year by the Department and is
published by the University of Nebraska Press. My first decision after
Dr.
Levine's request was to contact Don Bannister. Don decided to visit
Lincoln to
help me prepare for the conference. After Don's departure, I asked
David if we
could hold the Symposium in the fall semester of 1975. Usually the
Symposium is
held in two sessions, three persons speaking in the Fall and three in
the Spring.
David liked the idea of an International Conference held just in the
Fall. Inviting
speakers to this conference was aided by the networking of persons
writing in
PCP. Networking had given me the advantage of knowing most of the
speakers personally.
I invited Don Bannister, England; Miller Mair, Scotland; Han Bonarius,
the
Netherlands; Jim Mancuso, SUNY at Albany; Seymour Rosenberg, Rutgers
University.
A speaker not committed to PCP was Ted Sarbin, University of
California, a
friend of Jim Mancuso. I also read a paper.
Two years
later, Dr. Fay Fransella chaired the Second International Congress at
Oxford
University. Don Bannister chaired another Congress at Cambridge
University. Dr. Han
Bonarius chaired the third Congress at the University of Utrecht.
Professor
Jack Adams-Webber chaired a fourth Congress at St. Catherines, Canada.
Dr.
Adams‑Webber was Dr. Kelly's last graduate student at Brandeis
University.
Franz Epting and I chaired the Fifth Congress in Boston. Many more
Congresses
were held throughout the world.
To close, I
wish George Kelly could have known about the expansion of his theory
into the
world. Mrs. Kelly did know and she attended the first conference in
Lincoln in
1975.
My final
comment relates to the question: Who was George Kelly? My answer came
in the
form of a statement he made to members of his research team. “I could
sit up all
night working over a drafting board and feel refreshed in the morning. I
get tired working with people. It's more important to work with people.“
(2009)
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ABOUT
THE
AUTHOR
 Al
Landfield
is Emeritus Professor at the University of
Nebraska in Lincoln, NE, USA. He was one of George Kelly’s first
students and later became a professor
at Purdue University, the University of Missouri, Columbia, and in
Lincoln,
Nebraska. He is best known for his contributions to the theory and for
his introduction of the
Interpersonal Transaction Groups in 1975/78, the pyramiding technique
in 1971,
and developing systems of construct content coding in 1971, and wrote
and edited a number
of PCP classics. He organised the famous
Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, later known as the First
International
Congress on PCP, in 1975. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the
American
Midwest, a few hours from Kelly’s birthplace. (Eds.)
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REFERENCE
Landfield, A. (2011).
Going to Ohio State and to George A. Kelly
Personal Construct Theory &
Practice, 8, 11-16.
(Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp11/landfield11.html)
Contact:
Dr. A. Landfield,
3701 Faulkner Dr., Apt. 307
Lincoln, NE 68517
USA
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Received: 23 April
2011 – Accepted: 15 May 2011 –
Published: 5 July 2011
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