Kelly and Jung
Dusan Stojnov (ESTOJNOV@ubbg.etf.bg.ac.yu)
Sun, 26 Feb 1995 14:47 +0200
Dear Jim, Herman, Dave and other participants,
I am limited to shorter messages, and cannot say all I want, so let me stick to
the point: It seems that I have trigered much bigger answer than anticipated.
Jim, I love your way of raising the isuues and please keep on going - if we
meet again, we''l have a lovely talk with a bottle of Chianti. But...
First, I have never claimed Jung for "one of us"... I just mentioned a book
that two Jungians edited in order to explore similarities and differences
between Jung and constructivists other than Kelly - Fair enough, I thought.
Second, I said that Renos and Don wanted to explore the similarities (and
bloody differencies, as well) between PCP and Yung. Third, I am threatened
with your idea to send Yung back to oblivion - by ni means NO! He was and
exponent of XIX century science with his Lamrakism, but he is still the only
one who has ever dared to explore so unusual and yet so important construct
systems like alchemy, miths, religions.... He still is the one who offers
the most versatile and in depth approach to diachronic picture of man. And,
if you take alook to some modern Yungian articles, you will fuind that he
might be very in soon, supported by moder positivist science!
Finaly, and this is the core issue: I challenge you to try to place Yung
unequivically on the ontological and epistemological grounds: Is he a
realist, idealist or intuitionalist? And can you place Kelly unambigiously
at the same dimension? In terms of epistemology: Is Yung rationalist or
empiricist? I bat you will have some hard time doing this, and I am
looking forward, because I spent some countless hours trying to decide.
I love Stephen Peper's root metaphore way of clasyfing the theories.
But it is just one of the ways to construe similarities and diferences
among them. The point is that there is no privileged perspective to
offer final solution -- and hence a safe way to compare theories.
Kelly found it out - and that is the main trick, although it creates
a loot of fuzz. I'll drink to that!
DUSAN STOJNOV
estojnov@ubbg.etf.bg.ac.yu
Psychology Department
Faculty of philosophy
Cika LJubina 18-20
11000
Beograd,
Yugoslavia
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