Tony wrote,
>Re Siobhan Alderson's message:
>
>>Anybody got any thoughts, literature etc. on the following statement:
>>"...though Kelly maintains that constructs are bipolar...this probably
>>cannot always be true."
>
>Presumably any construct, X, can be made to be bipolar by taking its
>opposite pole to be "not-X", or perhaps more realistically
>"not-particularly-X", yet only one pole may, in practice, be salient and
>the opposite pole may commonly be left vague. And exploring the
>implications of the vague, rarely-explicitly-used pole may be
>psychologically interesting.
You bet! My own very strong preference is that constructs are bipolar and
that I _must_ clarify the implicit pole if I'm to understand the emergent
pole.
Consider the emergent pole
"Good
and the implicit pole
"Poor"
as if you were construing a student essay.
Now consider the emergent pole
"Good"
and the implicit pole
"Evil"
Nuff said? "Good" is meaningless taken by itself.
Kind regards,
Devi
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