I am intrigued by the last para as it seemed incongruent with the rest of
your post. I don't question whether theories are compatible or not.
The issue is, can they be compared at all. A Kellyian would say yes
for that is the nature of the mind it seeks to creat similarities and
diiferences of all it is presented.
In other words constructive alternativism does not specify, per se,
the content of cognition. It only creates sketches the workings of
our "construal process" somehat independent of anticipational process of channeling behavior
toward goals. So, Kelly is first, contextualist and second, organicist.
Contrast this with the Jungian view which is primarily organicist
and secondarily contexualist. Neither of the two theories is very
mechanistic alhough they do appear be said to be formist while Jung is
decidely intluence of animism (a la Pepper and Sarbin)
Jung, like Kelly, uses the idea of bi-polar constructs as a
fundamental principle to explain individual variations in personality;
in Jung: the degree of integration of opposite elemental forces, while
in Kelly: the degree of reflexivity of "self" in and as social process.
To sum up, Kelly's approach focused on epistemology or HOW we construe.
Jung was concerned more with why and what we are. Thus Jung provides a
teleological hypothesis, trans-cultural in scope, a view that goes
particularly deep in defining an evolutionary theory based almost
entirely on CONTENT -- dreams, visions, symbols -- rather than
defining a matrix of element-construct STRUCTURE as in PCP.
Personally I feel the more similarities and differences that we can construe
among and within theoretical approaches the better. And that is itself is a
useful experiment of sorts. Robert and Jim thanks for your recent posts
which are helping me in my understanding that we are all inherently reflexive
*and* evaluative.
Hemant Desai
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