Re: PCP

Chris Evans (C.Evans@sghms.ac.uk)
Tue, 13 Oct 1998 11:37:51 +0100

On 8 Oct 98, at 10:29, DARAGH O'REILLY wrote:

> Hi
>
> I came across the statement below in the management literature, and am
> curious to know if this is in fact accurate. Has the PCP community in
> general re-framed Kelly's work in this way?
>
>
> "Personal construct theory was first postulated as a theory of personality
> (Kelly, 1955); but later adherents assign it a more limited role as a
> theory of cognition (Fransella and Bannister, 1977)." in Reger, R, and
> Huff, A. (1993),Strategic Groups: A Cognitive Perspective, Strategic
> Management Journal, Vol.14, 103-124.
>

Hi Daragh & PCPers!

I'm surprised not to see any other responses to this. I'd say that
"later adherents" which must surely include most of this list, would
disagree with that strongly. Outside PCP I suspect there has been
a widespread misconstruction that PCP is cognitive. Funny how
these things stick tenaciously. I'm sure the real interest for me in
PCP is the extent to which it successfully avoids being _merely_ a
theory of cognition, emotion, personality or social interaction but
brings a unifying way of thinking to all these. I suspect that's
rather uncomfortable to the conventional organisation of the
"psycho" (and "psychi") industries.

What do others think? Is the outside perception of PCP shifting?
Anyone else got revealing asides like this one from Huff?

Best wishes all!

Chris

Chris Evans, R&D Consultant,
Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust

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