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OBITUARY |
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Miller Mair – The caring radical
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1937 – 2011 |
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Miller
Mair was one of the five or so important psychologists in the UK who promoted
PCP when I first came to it in the late sixties, the others being Don
Bannister, Fay Fransella, Phillida Salmon and Tom Ravenette. My first real
awareness of Miller’s work was reading the excellent series of papers in the
British Journal of Medical Psychology in 1970, based on a symposium he had
organised in London two years earlier, papers which should be more accessible
today than they are.
In
1968, Don and Miller’s book, the Evaluation
of Personal Constructs had appeared. It was for many years the standard
textbook on Repertory Grid methodology, and I think responsible for the
approach gaining credence not just within psychology but beyond to other
disciplines and stimulating a large amount of research over the next couple of
decades in many fields of human affairs. But Miller was already applying his
radical eye within PCP itself and was becoming impatient with the concentration
on technology and methodology that grid research could generate, as opposed to
understanding the client’s personal experiences, struggles and predicament. The
grid became for him like “a great, simple-minded giant, unable to string two
words together – you ended with only statistical rather than linguistic
connections” (Mair, 2003).
Of
his many contributions, three papers stand out to me as particularly important
and lasting developments. When I was training in Nottingham with David Smail,
David invited his close friend Miller to come and speak and Miller read to us
his paper “Metaphors for Living”, which he went on to present at the Nebraska
Symposium on Motivation in 1975. It was spellbinding. Miller’s scholarship
really came to the fore. He had spent a year studying in the Netherlands and
the breadth of his reading and knowledge was impressive. As well as discussing
metaphor in comprehensive detail, he was developing a radical critique of the
discipline of psychology itself and the narrow view of science that it was
adhering to. Instead he argued for a multi- or trans-disciplinary study in
which the fields of philosophy, literature, religion, poetry and the arts would
all become part of the psychologist’s concern and knowledge. Re-reading this
paper in preparing for this article made me realise just how important it was
for my own development.
At
one point he compares how he feels about constructs with that of metaphor (see
figure 1). But Miller weaves his findings from the metaphor literature together
with PCP producing a much enriched perspective on construing and the nature of
man. I cannot recommend highly enough this paper. It should still be studied
today though written over 35 years ago.
Construct | Metaphor | Linear
Directional
Geometric
axis
Hard
Straight
Angular
Intellectual
Digital | Aura of Association
Flowing, Colourful
Sinuous, Sensuous
Surprising
Ambiguous
Inviting
Warm, Rich
Protean | Figure
1: Miller’s description of construct and metaphor
(1976, p 264)
The
following year, Miller presented his paper, “The Community of Self”. This idea
is itself a major working metaphor. That we can personify the different
construings or positions that we take up elaborates Constructive Alternativism
and is to Miller preferable to the rather abstract notion of the 'construct system'.
In this view, constructs and viewpoints become alive, capable of talking to
each other, arguing and collaborating. At a theoretical level this view
presages the dialogical and positional approaches that have since become so
popular but it is also a practical therapeutic tool that is often very useful.
It encourages the client to consider the various 'selves' or positions that
they can take up, enriching their understanding and ability to communicate and
transcend their dilemmas. His contribution is important in de-pathologising the
idea that we have several ‘voices’ or people in our heads, as it were, and that
these figures can have conversations with each other in resolving difficulties
and decisions. Shortly, we will look at a lovely example of the application of
this metaphor which Miller applied to himself as he struggled to deal with a
difficult situation.
A
decade later, Miller opened the first two issues of the International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology with two articles
about “Psychology as Story-telling”. This is Miller at his radical and
challenging best. Not only again did he anticipate in great detail another
approach subsequently to gain popularity – Narrative Therapy – but offers
further thoughts on how to reconfigure the very discipline of psychology itself.
We cannot understand a person’s experiences and difficulties without putting
them in the context of the person’s story. To use a useful distinction offered
by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) our construing is not just synchronic – an understanding of how a
situation hangs together at a single point in time, but diachronic – how events are seen as forming a pattern over periods
of time, the distinction between a snapshot and a movie. This sounds very
abstract but is immediately useful. I remember so many times sitting in
psychiatric case conferences, hearing details about a person’s mental state,
behaviour and symptoms and the medication that would immediately be suggested
to address these. I would ask, “What has been happening in this person’s life
and how are they anticipating events unfolding in the future?” Of course we
would then begin to hear a story that put an entirely different perspective on
the difficulties that had been described.
But
Miller goes further than this. He says that we live and inhabit our stories and
stories live and inhabit us. Miller is here elaborating a discursive and social
constructionist dimension whilst maintaining a position compatible with PCP and
its emphasis on the experiencing and acting person. We inhabit the great
stories of our culture. Before Foucault was made popular in the narrative
tradition, Miller spoke about how we are shaped by discourses; every telling is
a political act, a fight for survival or more insidiously a subjugating and
limiting force. Psychology carries a powerful and disempowering master myth. In
the scientific psychology which we have been offered, we have been trained out
of telling stories. Psychology he says needs restructuring, to be made into a
discipline of discourse rather than as a natural or social science.
He
saw it as important that psychologists should be trained to tell stories.
Miller put this into practice in his own department getting the therapists to
tell the story of their personal encounter with their clients.
A
radically new and much broader psychological discipline is being articulated. In
this way, as he says in the chapter in the International
Handbook of PCP (Mair, 2003), psychology will be put back in touch with its deep
roots in philosophy, religion, art and literature. He talks here of how he hated so much of what he was taught by
his psychology tutors, even more strongly than Don Bannister had done. “My
hatred was aesthetic. It was to do with beauty. I found almost everything in scientific
psychology to be ugly, hard edged, uncomfortable, unconvincing”.
Miller
himself shared a moving example applied to himself the last time I heard him
speak at the Belgrade Conference of the European
Personal Construct Association (EPCA) last year in 2010 and reproduced in
the recent volume, PCP in an Accelerating
World (Stojnov, Džinović, Pavlović, & Frances,
2011).
He described how he had to appear as an external interviewer in what would be a
tense and competitive atmosphere in order to fill a senior post in a psychological
therapies department and make a recommendation that would have profound
implications for the future of the service. To help himself in this situation
he considered the various competing selves in his own repertory.
I have taken
the liberty of entering text from Miller’s story into what I call a Qualitative Grid (Procter, 2002, Procter
& Procter, 2008) which allows both the structure and the narrative sequence
both to be portrayed (see figure 2).
He
describes the several voices in his mind, the anxious one, the rebellious
teenager, the reformer, Mr Fair-minded and Mr Let’s-get-this-done-with.
We will go through the grid row by row from
1 to 4.
1. | Anxious was insecure, uneasy, nervous. He was
feeling inadequate to the task that was facing us, even a bit overawed… He was tight
and closed.
The Rebel
Teenager was
immediately there to be heard, loud and clear. He wanted to bash the
establishment bastard. ‘Make him squirm or let him feel he is being successful
and then dump him!’ was his vigorous advice.
The Reformer wanted
to help towards enabling fairer and more open ways to live in and develop
psychotherapy. His words of advice were ‘Be faithful to your values’.
Mr Fair
Minded wanted
to see and value the strengths of each candidate… he also wanted to attend to
the needs of the world and of the discipline of psychotherapy in a broader way
than was often done.
Mr Let’s Get
This Done With said
‘Let it go, make the best choice you can and then leave those involved to
get on with it. You’ve done what you can, but they (the
‘establishment’) will always win in the end, so let it be’ (from Mair, 2011,
p16)
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Next, he gives us his reaction to each of these characters.
The figures in the cells show the order in which Miller tells the story.
2. | I was
shocked by the forceful presence, the outspoken honesty, of The
Rebel Teenager. I couldn’t help but laugh at his ‘no nonsense’ approach.
I was
grateful to Mr
Fair Minded, for the balance which he brought and the sense of being so
trustworthy.
The Reformer reminded
me, in this public and politically charged situation, of the importance of
being true to your values and aspirations if you possibly can.
Mr Let’s Get
This Done With voiced
a familiar, already defeated, position of the underdog but I valued the fact
that he stated that so clearly.
Anxious had
so obviously been present, feeling that he was being left with the whole
responsibility in his lap, as the others initially remained in the shadows,
mostly out of reach. (op cit, pp 16 – 17)
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He briefly recapitulates:
3. | I got a
strong sense of the powerful energy of The Rebel Teenager, the quiet passion
of The
Reformer, the safe pair of hands of Mr Fair Minded, and the worldly
practicality of Mr
Let’s Get This Done With. All these energies seemed useful and had their
relevance.
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He decides to “appoint” Mr Fair-minded as chair of his team of selves:
4. | I
immediately asked Mr
Fair Minded to
be the Chairperson of my ‘team’ for this occasion. I asked him to draw on the
vigorous anger of the Teenage Rebel, if that was needed, and on the vision of
the Reformer too.
I wanted us all to recognise that it was, as Mr Let’s Get This Done With was
saying, a job to be done. We would do it as well as we could and then let it
go. Anxious, by
now much relieved, was also a valuable member of the team since he is always so
sensitively open to the undercurrents and hidden threats in situations like
this. He could also be helpful to Mr Fair Minded. (op cit p 17)
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| | | | MILLER'S SELVES | | | Anxious | Rebel Teenager | Reformer | Mr Fair-minded | Mr Let’s get this done with | EPI- SODES | Miller’s description | Insecure
nervous overawed
tight and closed
| Loud and Clear
‘Make establishment
candidate squirm’
| Fair and Open
‘Be faithful to
your values | ‘See each one’s
strengths’
‘Think of the needs
of the world and of psychotherapy’ | ‘Make
best choice you can’
‘Leave
them to decide, establishment always wins’ | Miller’s reaction to each | 5
feels the whole responsibility, others in the
shadows | 1
Shocked by his forceful presence
Had to laugh at his no-nonsense approach | 3
Reminded me to be
true to my values and aspirations | 2
Grateful for the
balance he brought
Trustworthy | 4
Defeated, Underdog,
but glad he speaks so clearly | Miller recaps | | 1
Powerful
Energy | 2
Quiet
Passion | 3
Safe
pair
of
hands | 4
Worldly
Practicality | Asked Mr Fair-minded to be Chair and to: | 5
Much relieved:
‘Note his sensitive openness to
undercurrents and threats:
Helpful to you’ | 2
‘Draw on his vigorous anger’ | 3
‘Draw on his vision’ | 1
‘Be chairperson to my team | 4
‘We’ll all do as
well as we can
and then let go’ |
| | Figure 2: Qualitative Grid: The Community of Miller’s Selves as Job Interviewer
Miller
concludes by recounting how much this contributed to the panel making a knife-edge
decision, by him not just making a logical or intellectual contribution but by combining
head and heart. He said that it seemed to help the whole interview panel to make
a wider, more balanced and unanimous choice.
I
think this is very profound and also touching in giving us a window into
Miller’s own world and experience and the richness of the construing he
generates. I got the feeling, as I reflect on this wonderful account, that we
are glimpsing an additional Kellian, or perhaps I should say, Mairian cycle of
construing, as he musters the selves, they interact, converse and fall into a
fresh configuration and coherence, empowering Miller to move into the unknown
situation with calm and renewed authority, control and passion.
Miller’s
body lay in state in the temple at Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Community
founded in the West and where he and his wife Ingrid had first met 20 years
previously. This was a great honour, especially when, as far as I know, Miller
was never attached to any particular religious order himself. But the Tibetan
Buddhist tradition of bringing to mind and establishing personifications of
various qualities such as Compassion, Wisdom, Cutting through Obscuration and
Equanimity would fit in well with Miller’s psychology, not to mention his personal
qualities as a man.
| | | REFERENCES | | | Bannister,
D., Mair, J.M.M. (1968). The evaluation of personal constructs. London:
Academic Press.
De Saussure, F. (1916). Course in general
linguistics. Transl. W. Baskin (1959). New York: The Philosophical Library.
Mair,
J.M.M. (1976) Metaphors for living. in A. Landfield (Ed.). Nebraska symposium
on motivation: Personal construct psychology 1976. (pp. 243-290). Lincoln,
Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press
Mair,
J.M.M. (1977). The community of self. In D. Bannister (Ed.). New perspectives in personal construct
theory. (pp. 125-149). London: Academic Press
Mair,
J.M.M. (1985). The long quest to know. In F. Epting, F. & A. Landfield
(Eds.). Anticipating personal construct
psychology. (pp. 3-14). Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Mair,
J.M.M. (1988). Psychology as storytelling. International
Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 1, 125-137.
Mair,
J.M.M. (1989). Kelly, Bannister and a story-telling psychology. International Journal of Personal Construct
Psychology, 2, 1-14.
Mair,
J.M.M. (2003). A psychology of questions. In F. Fransella (Ed.) International Handbook of Personal Construct
Psychology. (pp. 405-413). Chichester: Wiley
Mair,
J.M.M. (2011). Searching to understand: On being a psychologist in a changing
world. In D. Stojnov,
V. Džinović, V., J. Pavlović, & M. Frances (Eds.). Personal Construct Psychology in an Accelerating World. (pp.
11-28). Belgrade, Serbia: Serbian Constructivist
Association, EPCA.
Procter,
H. G. (2002). Constructs of individuals and relationships. Context, 59, 11-12.
Procter,
H. G. & Procter, M.J. (2008). The use of qualitative grids to examine the
development of the construct of Good and Evil in Byron’s play “Cain: a Mystery”.
Journal of Constructivist Psychology,
21, 343 – 354.
Stojnov, D., Džinović, V., Pavlović, J., &
Frances, M. (Eds.) (2011). Personal construct psychology
in an accelerating world. Belgrade, Serbia: Serbian Constructivist
Association, EPCA. | | | Harry Procter, Taunton, Somerset (UK) July, 2011
Correspondence address: harryprocter20@gmail.com | |
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REFERENCE
Procter, H. (2011).
Miller Mair – The caring radical – 1937-2011
Personal Construct Theory &
Practice, 8, 19-23.
(Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp11/procter-mair11.html)
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Received: 28 July
2011 – Accepted: 1 August 2011 –
Published: 3 August 2011
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