KELLY'S PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY AND DEWEY'S PRAGMATISM: SOME DIRECT AND SOME 'INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT' ASPECTS
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Bill Warren
KELLY’S PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY
AND DEWEY’S PRAGMATISM:
SOME DIRECT AND SOME ‘INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT’ ASPECTS
Bill Warren
University of Newcastle, Australia
This paper is intended as a companion paper to two others focused on the links between Pragmatism and
George Kelly’s theory of personal constructs: Butt’s (2005) discussion of George Herbert Mead (1863-1931),
and McWilliams’ (2009) account of the ideas of William James (1842-1910). Given that much of what has
been said about Pragmatism and PCP in these last papers, and also in Warren (1998, 2003) applies almost
equally to Dewey, the present paper attempts to present a different perspective and to highlight lesser known
matters that are hopefully not only interesting in their own right but also raise similarities and points of
contrast between the intellectual careers of Dewey and Kelly.
Thus is here presented a discussion of some aspects of the ideas and career of a thinker long identified
with North American Pragmatism, in the light of Kelly’s (1955/1991) comment that Dewey’s “philosophy
and psychology can be read between many of the lines of the psychology of personal constructs” (p.
154/108). The discussion is necessarily selective, and in the context of a focus on the historical and theoretical
origins of PCP. Its aim is to provide a fuller sketch of the wider climate of ideas to which both Dewey and
Kelly were subjected as their scholarly work and their careers developed.
Key words: personal construct psychology, pragmatism, Kelly, Dewey
CONTEXT: DEWEY AND KELLY IN cluded: The Reflex Arc in Psychology (1896),
TIME The Significance of the Problem of Knowledge
(1897), The School and Society (1900), The In-
Scholarly works fluence of Charles Darwin on Philosophy
(1910), Democracy and Education (1916/1966),
John Dewey (1859-1952) was appointed to a Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), and Hu-
Chair of Philosophy, Psychology and Pedagogy man Nature and Conduct (1922). During Kelly’s
in 1904, insisting that the name of the Chair be early adulthood Dewey published significant
as it was because of his conviction that the three further work: How We Think (1910 originally,
disciplines it describes were inherently con- revised 1933), The Quest for Certainty (1929), A
nected. He published a good deal of his major Common Faith (1934), and Experience and Edu-
work before George Kelly (1905-1967) was an cation (1938). In a number of cases there were
adult. Kelly was appointed to a Chair of Psy- republications of the earlier works and revised
chology in 1945, later to a Chair of Clinical Psy- editions in the period in which Kelly’s own ideas
chology (1946), both at Ohio State University, were taking shape. As will be developed below,
and then to a Chair of Theoretical Psychology at Dewey and Kelly also shared a more general
Brandeis University in 1965. Kelly’s major work social-intellectual milieu, one in which Dewey
was published in 1955, though with a gestation was a very significant and controversial figure.
period between 1930 and that publication date. This significance and controversy turn around
Dewey’s significant work in the period of two matters: Progressive Education, and De-
Kelly’s childhood, infancy, and adolescence in- wey’s social activism.
32
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010Kelly’s personal construct psychology and Dewey’s pragmatism
Progressive education ing as a coalition against ignorance and the
threat of social divisiveness and fragmentation.
Kelly’s early years studying and working in the Progressive Education is captured well as to
field of educational psychology corresponds to its essential features by Kneller (1964/1971):
what is identified as the ‘progressive era’ (1917- education should be centered on the learner’s
1957), spawned by what Cremin (1961) calls the needs and interests, involve the learner coope-
‘progressive impulse’ (1876-1917). The ‘im- rating rather than competing with others, and
pulse’ was constituted by a zeitgeist in which the actively involved in the process, in respect of
ideas of Rousseau, Marx, Darwin (particularly which process the problem-solving project was
Social Darwinism), Herbert Spencer, and Freud the ‘gold standard’ example, in a context where
were resonating in Europe and had reached a teacher was a mentor or guide not an imparter
North America. Thus, too, was the psychologist of knowledge, that context (e.g. a school) being
William James (1899/1907) writing to teachers run democratically with learners having an equal
as the centrality and magnitude of the activity voice with their guides or mentors. In Dewey’s
that is education was being recognized as having version of these features, there are no such
a vital function of ensuring social-cohesion. De- things as ‘subjects’, as the world comes at us not
wey’s (1900) The School and Society recognized as bits or lumps that are Geography or Mathe-
this as did his later Democracy and Education matics etc., but as a ‘blooming buzzing confu-
(1916/1966) and there were numerous other sion’ out of which we make a sense; though the
voices that were formed into a full voiced choir sense we make is not completely arbitrary. All of
of opinion, argument and experimentation that these ideas sit very well with personal construct
challenged North American education at its core. psychology.
The formative role in relation to this choir was Cremin’s wider argument is that the Progres-
played by Joseph Mayer Rice, and the main sive Education Movement represents “a crucial
choirmaster was John Dewey. Rice, a pediatri- chapter in the history of recent American civili-
cian who had become disturbed by the children zation” and that “to ignore it is to miss one
he saw whose problems arose from the social whole facet of America’s response to industrial-
conditions in which they lived, wrote an analysis ism” (p. ix-x). Thus, by the time Kelly was en-
of the parlous state of North American schooling gaged in the general milieu of education – teach-
and education. As Cremin (1961) tells us, Rice’s ing, research, dealing with ‘difficult students’ –
articles in The Forum (between 1892 and June, progressive ideas were ‘in the air’, and Dewey if
1893) were to constitute the catalyst for a revolu- not the mentor of the Progressive Movement,
tion in thinking. Generally, he argues, progres- certainly a very significant influence within it.
sive education originated in the wider “humani- Indeed, an emphasis on the social dimensions of
tarian effort to apply the promise of American education, particularly a view that society could
life – the ideal of government by, of, and for the be ‘restructured’ using the schools, was contro-
people” to the urban-industrial civilization that versial; it particularly annoyed those who had
emerged at the end of the nineteenth century just fought a war, and would fight another, to
(Cremin, 1961, p. viii). For him, “progressive preserve the existing lifestyle. Dewey did not
education began as Progressivism in education: a accept the ideas of the Social Reconstructionist
many-sided effort to use the schools to improve School of the Movement which had raised the
the lives of individuals” (Cremin, 1961, p. viii). question “dare the schools build a new social
The crucial points here are a stress on the social order?” This lack of support for ‘harder Left’
dimensions of life (influenced by the ideas of ideas was despite Dewey’s social activism and
Marx and Social Darwinism, then Mead in par- his involvements in many social and political
ticular), on the idea of a ‘social science’ (the new causes, such as women’s suffrage, the unioniza-
sciences of Sociology and Psychology), and on tion of teachers, his involvement in organiza-
‘the practical’ (American Pragmatism), combin- tions encouraging social and cultural relations
with Russia and Latin America, as well as his
33
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010Bill Warren
championing of academic freedom. He had also, from?’ might answer ‘from a shop’ was but a
at some personal risk and aged in his late seven- relatively trivial example of the distancing of
ties, gone to Mexico to Chair the Committee es- people from the origins of things in real, practic-
tablished in 1937 to review the Moscow trial of al activity of human beings in their efforts to
Leon Trotsky, which concluded that, in essence, live, and to survive at a higher than mere subsis-
Trotsky had been ‘framed’. tence level. Again, Kelly’s three early (‘jug-
These last interests and involvements, in ad- gled’) jobs -- with bankers, in an Ameri-
dition to his general social-critical commentary, canization class for would-be citizens, and in
account for the creation of an FBI file on Dewey language classes for labor organizers – could
(Beineke, 1987). This file shows three periods of hardly not have provided first-hand experience
active interest: 1930, during WWII, and after his of these tensions that the progressive educator in
death in 1957. The first two periods reveal con- general, and Dewey in particular, were highlight-
cerns about his friendly relations with Russia ing and of which they were warning. Kelly’s
and his visit there in 1928, and his membership MA in 1927 (One Thousand Workers and Their
of organizations with the foci indicated above. Leisure) attests to his interest in social issues,
Material from the third period was only partly just as do his PhD (Common Factors in Reading
released and shows simply that the then FBI Di- and Speech Difficulties) and his earlier Bachelor
rector, J. Edgar Hoover, requested a review of of Education Degree, evidence his interest in
the file, but the reason for that review and what research and thinking in the field of education
he did with that summary is not known. A signif- (Zelhart and Jackson, 1983; Fransella, 1995); the
icant amount of this latter material was not re- last to be extended through his University ap-
leased as of 1987, but a notation that President pointment. Moreover, he would have been un-
Harry Truman had congratulated Dewey on his likely to have not been aware of Dewey’s gener-
ninetieth birthday appears twice (Beineke, 1987, al critical social commentary and his work in at
p. 51)! Just how significant this last notation is least the 1930s and 1940s in the type of organi-
can perhaps be gleaned from two others appear- zations that had raised the interest of the FBI.
ing elsewhere in the files: “subject’s writings are Equally, Dewey’s views concerning the impor-
numerous, involved, and complicated. Reading tance of labor organizing itself, of teachers be-
them is as task”, and, concerning a physical de- coming unionized, and of the specific organiza-
scription, “Carelessly combed gray hair ... Dis- tions developed to effect that organization, were
heveled attire ... Retired, mild mannered gentle- unlikely beyond Kelly’s awareness.
man ... Wears spectacles ... Monotonous drawl... We can thus locate Kelly in a general social-
Drooping moustache” (Beineke, 1987, p. 48). intellectual context where education was more
The national security importance of these obser- broadly conceived than it had been both as to the
vations is not exactly apparent. activity itself in its various forms, styles, and
Interestingly, in terms of Kelly’s rural origins processes, and in terms of its connection to the
and early life, Dewey (who had similar origins) wider life of the individual in society. The essen-
laments the demise of the rural community as the tial features of progressivism writ large are
US moved to the new ‘urban-industrial complex’ summarized by Cremin (1961) as schools taking
style of life. The cohesiveness, sense of commu- on a much wider program and responsibilities
nity, a closer to ‘real life’ that this community (embracing pupils’ health, work, family and
expressed and provided, was lost, and Dewey community life), the application of principles of
saw an alienating, destructive-competitive form teaching and learning emerging from the new
of individualization emerging. This had the po- social sciences and psychology, adapting prac-
tential to fracture the cohesiveness of American tices to individual needs of children drawn now
society; which society still had recall of a bitter from a wider social class base and evidencing a
civil war little more than a half century earlier. wider range of ability. Underpinning all of this
That children, when asked questions like ‘where was the belief that “culture could be democra-
does milk, or a woolen coat, or meat, etc. come tized without being vulgarized, the faith that eve-
34
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010Kelly’s personal construct psychology and Dewey’s pragmatism
ryone could share not only in the benefits of the “... philosophical problems arise because
new sciences but in the pursuit of the arts as of widespread and widely felt difficulties
well” (p. viii-ix). It has been argued elsewhere in social practice. ... [wherever] a system
that PCP assumes -- and needs to assume for its [of philosophy] becomes influential its
particular understanding of the idea of ‘mental connection with a conflict of interests call-
health’ – a democratic form of social life, ‘dem- ing for some program of social adjustment
ocratic’ understood in psycho-social terms (War- must always be discovered. At this point
ren, 1996). This is a credible argument and to the the intimate connection between philoso-
extent that it is there is a clear compatibility be- phy and education appears. ... when phi-
tween PCP and these views as to what education losophical issues are approached from the
should be about. side of the kind of mental disposition to
which they correspond, or the difference
in educational practice they make when
DEWEY’S PRAGMATISM AND KELLY’S acted upon the life situations which they
PCP formulate can never be far from view. ... If
we are willing to conceive of education as
Given earlier observations concerning existing the process of forming fundamental dispo-
work in relation to Dewey, Pragmatism and sitions, intellectual and emotional, toward
PCP, this section concentrates on two of De- nature and fellow men (sic), philosophy
wey’s ideas that have had relatively less exten- may even be defined as the general theory
sive attention and which are consonant with the of education” (Dewey, 1916/1966, p. 328)
present discussion: growth and ideas as instru-
ments. That interconnectedness between the practical
activities of human life in which learning is –
and education ought to be – grounded, is, in turn,
‘Growth’: The ‘natural tendency’ and the interconnected with Dewey’s particular form of
essence of education pragmatism. As indicated elsewhere (Warren,
1998, 2003), the development of Pragmatism
A particular notion within progressive education from the early ideas of C.S. Peirce to William
and elaborated most fully and forcefully by De- James, to Dewey, saw three different concepts
wey is growth. It is here that, whatever the gen- emerge. In the event of this emergence, Peirce
eral debt Kelly has to Dewey, a more specific was to use the term pragmaticism of his own
link can be discerned. Moreover, this link itself position, allowing James to keep the term prag-
tightens the connection to pragmatism, particu- matism, while Dewey distinguished his position
larly as Dewey was to develop it in his own as instrumentalism. The differences between
thinking. these terms turn essentially around what each of
Dewey’s pragmatism, like that of others of these thinkers was endeavoring to elucidate; as
this movement, derives from the view that our Gallie (1952) has it, James was focused on the
thinking, the ideas we have and understandings individual’s thinking, Peirce on the essential
we develop are all grounded in and by the prac- character of all thinking.
tical problems of life and the practical require- For Dewey (1916/1966), growth does not
ments of life and living. Dewey, though, is con- imply a lack of something in the (immature) in-
cerned to relate this fact to the activity in which dividual (or other animate entity) that is to
human beings engage and call ‘education’, and ‘grow’ under particular circumstances. Rather, it
this is coupled with his contention that the three is to be thought of as a potentiality or power.
disciplines of Philosophy, Psychology and Edu- That power is based in two chief aspects of im-
cation are so intimately connected. As he says: maturity, dependence and plasticity. Dependence
was a positive, not a negative feature evidenced
by the fact that babies and children do not lapse
35
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010Bill Warren
into an ever increasing parasitism, but, rather, depends upon what is done to alter the
are very well endowed with a power to “enlist state of things. Success and failure are the
the cooperative attention of others” (p. 43). This, primary "categories" of life; achieving of
in turn, for Dewey again denotes a power rather good and averting of ill are its supreme
than a weakness because of its social signific- interests; hope and anxiety (which are not
ance; it activates and energizes the social level self-enclosed states of feeling, but active
because it involves interdependence. Further, attitudes of welcome and wariness) are
this idea of growth as a natural feature of the life dominant qualities of experience. Imagin-
of any organism, points up the significance of ative forecast of the future is this forerun-
adaptability or what Dewey calls plasticity. By ning quality of behavior rendered availa-
the last term he means not merely ‘fitting in’ to ble for guidance in the present (p. 13).
circumstances, but the ability to learn from expe-
rience, “to retain from one experience something With this prospective outlook in play, recall of
which is of avail in coping with the difficulties the past and speculation about it, providing what
of a later situation” (p. 44). Critically, this in- others call ‘knowledge’, has to be seen rather as
volves the power to modify actions next time on an instrument for predicting the future by way of
the basis of the results of previous experience; forming hypotheses drawn from the past, for test
the power to develop dispositions and, in turn, in the future.
habits. The latter can become ‘fixed’ and thus
exert a hold over us, or ‘bad’ when they are se-
vered from reason and intelligence. Routine ha- Ideas as ‘instruments’
bits -- as important as they can be – represent the
loss of plasticity, our power to vary our res- From quite early on in his academic career, De-
ponses in our search for an appropriate, effective wey was critical of the ‘passivity’ of the image
way of dealing with a new situation. The habits of human beings reflected in the ‘reflex arc’ no-
and dispositions that involve an intellectual ele- tion that underpinned the discipline of Psycholo-
ment will be less likely to become so fixed that gy by the late 1800s. Dewey argued in his The
they impose “ruts, routine ways, with loss of Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology (1896/1972),
freshness, open-mindedness, and originality”. that this notion was timely and important, but
The context of these ideas was a discussion con- incorrect. It was timely because the new science
cerning education and Dewey’s conclusion was of Psychology was generating so much informa-
that, since “growth is the characteristic of life, tion that challenged previous generalizations and
education is all one with growing; it has no end classifications as to require a new unifying prin-
beyond itself” (p. 53). ciple. The idea of the reflex arc as a general
The ‘beyond itself’ that was the focus of working hypothesis, he felt, came closer than
thinking was discussed in Dewey’s The Need for any other to meeting this requirement. However,
a Recovery of Philosophy (1917) where his idea it was an incorrect way of representing the phe-
of growth as the principle of life is given speci- nomenon it was attempting to illuminate, still too
ficity. In this work he argues that much connected to the older psychology it
sought to replace, but needing not to be rejected
Anticipation is ... more primary than re- – thereby restoring the older psychology – but,
collection; projection than summoning of rather, corrected.
the past; the prospective than the retros- The reflex arc accounted for behavior by
pective. Given a world like that in which conceptualizing a three-fold process in which a
we live, a world in which environing sensation (sense impression) gets the attention of
changes are partly favorable and partly a passive organism and becomes an ‘idea’,
callously indifferent, and experience is which generates an action; three separate, or ‘se-
bound to be prospective in import; for any parated’ , “disconnected existences” (p. 100).
control attainable by the living creature For Dewey, this has not sufficiently disposed of
36
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010Kelly’s personal construct psychology and Dewey’s pragmatism
the classical dualism between body and mind Dewey called his form of pragmatism In-
which is echoed in the S-R dualism of sensation- strumentalism to stress more clearly than had
motor action. What is missed is the fact that Peirce and James the nature of ideas, and of
what is in process starts not with the sense im- thinking which uses them, as that with which we
pression but with sensori-motor coordination, work on the environment. Not just any idea or
“the real beginning is with the act of seeing; it is any environment but, rather, an environment
looking, and not the sensation of light” (p. 97). which is not immediately or automatically yield-
Thus Dewey proposes that the reflex arc be un- ing to our needs and interests, and an idea or set
derstood as describing a “fundamental psychical of them which originates in response to that fail-
unity” in which “sensory stimulus, central con- ure to yield. As he puts it in his discussion of the
nections and motor responses ...[function] not as influence of Darwin on philosophy (Dewey,
separate entities, but as divisions of labor, func- 1910): “... the holding of an end in view and the
tioning factors, within a single concrete whole” selecting and organizing out of the natural flux,
(p. 97). Dewey was illustrating his discussion on the basis of this end, conditions that are
here with the phenomenon of the child seeing a means, is intelligence” (p. 43). As did Hegel
candle flame, grasping it and being burned. A who had influenced his early work and whose
different, more graphic example of Dewey’s thought arguably did not entirely disappear from
point concerning the role of coordination is giv- his thinking, Dewey rejects a dualism of ‘theory’
en, however, when he is responding, critically, and ‘practice’. There are no ‘pure ideas’ existing
against an account of consciousness as (merely) in some mental realm divorced from the real
‘reactive’. The example given was that of a loud world, but all ideas begin with something we
noise being heard and one’s consciousness want to do and it being ‘blocked’ in the world
‘reacts’: that confronts us. Thus, “we estimate the import
or significance of any present desire or impulse
If one is reading a book, if one is hunting, by forecasting what it will come or amount to if
if one is watching in a dark place on a carried out; literally, its consequences define its
lonely night, if one is performing a chemi- consequence, its meaning or import” (Dewey
cal experiment, in each case, [a] noise has and Tufts, 1908, p.302).
a very different psychical value; it is a dif- We have here, in Dewey’s more general
ferent experience (p. 101) ideas, in the intellectual milieu they shared, and
in these two specific ideas of growth and instru-
For Dewey, the interaction of the organism with mentalism, some very clear links to what was to
its world originates in the natural activity of become PCP. This all serves to illuminate
‘seeking’, which organizes and coordinates what Kelly’s observation that the ideas of John Dewey
otherwise looks like entities that have been could be read between the lines of PCP. There is
called ‘stimulus’ and ‘response’. These early a shared conviction, not particularly novel in
ideas serving as criticism were to see S-R theory contemporary thought, that the human person
developed into a more complex position, but that has to be thought of as active in an ongoing
development never quite rebutted the criticism process involving the development of capacities
and it ultimately gave way to a focus on the to move and act in and on the world, to reflect,
workings of the ‘black box’ that gave us the so and to grow in understanding. The notion of the
called ‘cognitive revolution’ in psychology. In mind as essentially a process, a process of
the circuit to which Dewey refers, the coordinat- growth in understanding, and a significant me-
ing function which embraces itself and the mere- dium of that growth being the social world in
ly apparently separate ‘stimulus’ and ‘response’, which one is embedded, is clearly consistent
acts as an ‘instrument’. Hence his notion of the with a PCP. Further, Dewey would appear not to
‘idea’ as something with which we ‘work on’ the be troubled by PCP’s view of the person as a
environment; an ‘instrument’. ‘scientist’, one whose laboratory can be taken as
‘the world’. Or, again, both Dewey and PCP
37
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010Bill Warren
likely untroubled with a view drawn from
Schleiermacher’s hermeneutic phenomenology,
that that world provides a ‘text’ for us, a text for Table 1: A comparison of the steps in Kelly’s
us to interpret (Warren, 2000). ‘Experience Cycle’ with Dewey’s
Kelly’s notion of a construct is highly com- process of thinking, and Herbart’s
patible with Dewey’s notion of an idea as an in- steps in the process of effective teach-
strument, as is Dewey’s notion of thinking with ing.
Kelly’s construct system. Thus as a final brief
point of contact between Dewey and Kelly and Experience Dewey’s Herbart’s
another thinker, is Johann Friedrich Herbart Cycle ‘Thinking’ Teaching
(1776-1841) also worth noting as a further point Steps
of interest for the historical focus here in view. Anticipation Problematic Preparation
Kelly’s Experience Cycle, Dewey’s account of Situation
thinking, and Herbart’s Teaching Steps, are all Investment Isolation of Presentation
highly compatible accounts of the processes of data
thinking and learning in and from the environ- Encounter Reflection Comparison
ment we inhabit. Thus, drawing on Meyer, Confirmation/ Testing in Generalisation
(1939, p. 49), and noting Dewey’s early interest Disconfirmation Action
Herbart, we can map both Dewey and Kelly also Constructive Hypothesis Application
to Herbart (refer Table 1). As well as being a Revision becomes
thinker generally significant to the educational ‘fact’ or
milieu in which they found themselves, Herbart otherwise
is a thinker who Kelly also mentions and who
may have had more to offer than Kelly thought.
Kelly felt that Herbart might have benefitted All of the last observations accepted, at least one
from the notion of personal constructs existing in critical note might, however, be sounded. An
multi-dimensional networks (Kelly, 1955, p. early and perceptive discussion of the signific-
305) in explicating Herbart’s notion of apper- ance of Dewey’s ideas was added to our topic by
ception, a concept that, equally, has significance Novak (1983) who focused on the extent to
for the organization corollary (Warren, 1998). Of which personal construct psychology offered
a number of different senses of the term apper- something to educators by way of a significant
ception, the significant one here is referring to the alternative to behaviorism in the classroom. In
mind's conscious reflection on the inner state of that discussion, Novak identified similarities and
that mind. This sense became better known tensions between Dewey’s philosophy and
through Herbart's philosophy and psychology, and Kelly’s theory. He agrees that the broad idea of
more particularly through his educational ideas. the natural tendency in humankind to formulate
He used the term to refer to a process of assimilat- and test hypotheses is highly compatible be-
ing the mass of sense experiences that filled the tween the two positions and makes an interesting
mind -- a mass that was composed in part of con- comment about the titles of two works. These
tradictions and incomplete or vague ideas -- to works were Dewey’s (1938), Logic: The Theory
some sort of order or system with which the mind of Inquiry, and Bannister and Fransella’s (1971)
dealt with new experiences. The mind was con- Inquiring Man: The Theory of Personal Con-
ceived of as an active unity and the creative activ- structs. However, he suggests we look beyond
ity of mind that was apperception was conceived the similarities and finds that while Dewey’s
as a kind of 'mental breathing', as natural and in- general emphasis on scientific thinking meshes
herent to the organism as was physical breathing well with Kelly’s person-as-scientist, on the one
(Warren, 1998) hand Kelly goes further than Dewey, just as the
later work of Dewey may ask something more of
The alignments look like this: Kelly. Kelly goes beyond Dewey’s philosophy
38
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010Kelly’s personal construct psychology and Dewey’s pragmatism
by providing “a tool, the personal construct, for ing the ‘location’ of any theory/theorist in the
analyzing and extending the personal process of intellectual milieu that shaped them and their
‘sciencing’” (1983. p. 327). The later Dewey, mentors and peers. Second, such ‘locating’
however, he saw as stressing two aspects that stresses that ‘no person is an island’, and this can
Kelly may have overlooked. The first was that ground a plea for mutual social-cultural under-
Dewey was concerned with the “qualitative im- standing, thus deepening one’s individual under-
mediacy of perceptions” and their significance to standing and meaning-making. Third, the
real practical imperatives of here and now living. nuanced nature of intellectual effort emerging
The second was that that last significance, and from the same or similar intellectual milieu at-
the adequacy of a perception formed, was tied tests to the preservation of notions of individua-
very closely to others: “For Dewey, humans cer- tion and agency, notions which are too easily
tainly enquire, but inquiry is vitally connected to lost in a contemporary world in which sameness
the qualitative immediacy of perceptions and the and acquiescence would seem to be the impera-
social necessity for collective intelligence” (No- tives.
vak, 1983, p. 327). Thus, too, does Novak chal-
lenge with the question of how much of Dewey’s
thinking about democracy and his stress on free- REFERENCES
dom and inquiry, toleration of a diversity of
viewpoints, and so on, is found in Kelly? In the Bannister, D., & Fransella, F. (1972). Inquiring man.
quarter-century since Novak’s caution, the mat- Harmondsworth, England: Penguin.
ters he raised have been pursued by thinkers Beineke, J.A. (1987). The investigation of John De-
within PCP. Not only has the necessity of a truly wey by the FBI. Educational Theory, 37, 43-52.
Butt, T. (1998). Sociality, role, and embodiment.
democratic society and egalitarian outlook been
Journal of Constructivist Psychology 11, 105-116
argued as lying ’between the lines’ of PCP, but Butt, T. (2005) Personal construct theory, phenome-
also the social dimensions of construing well nology and pragmatism. History and Philosophy
acknowledged (Warren, 1998). A more nuanced of Psychology, 7, 23-35.
understanding of the ‘Dewey connection’ is also Chiari, G. & Nuzzo, M. L. (1996). Psychological
being elaborated by discussions of PCP and dif- constructivism: A metatheoretical differentiation.
ferent aspects of phenomenology, with which Journal of Constructivist Psychology. 9, 163-184.
perspectives Dewey has clear affinities (Chiari Chiari, G. & Nuzzo, M. L. (2004). Steering personal
and Nuzzo, 1996, 2004; Butt, 1998, 2005; War- construct theory toward hermeneutic constructiv-
ren, 1998, 2000; Domenici, 2008) ism. In J. D. Raskin and S. K. Bridges (Eds.). Stu-
dies in Meaning 2: Bridging the personal and so-
cial in constructivist psychology (51-65).
Cremin, L. A. (1961). The transformation of the
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS school: Progressivism in American education
1876-1957. New York: Random House.
It is customary to finish a formal discussion with Dewey, J. (1897). The significance of the problem of
some form of summary and conclusion, but the knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
foregoing discussion warns against such finality. Dewey, J. (1900). The school and society. Chicago:
Ideas of change and growth and of a mind ac- University of Chicago press.
tively engaged with the world, particularly and Dewey, J. (1910). The influence of Darwin on philos-
importantly a world of ‘others’ equally as much ophy, New York: Henry Holt.
Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Boston, Massachu-
engaged in the same activity of making sense of
setts: D.C. Heath.
that world, ought signal caution. Thus is offered Dewey, J. (1917). The need for a recovery of philos-
but three simple points as to what is construed ophy. In Creative Intelligence: Essays in the
here as the significance of the foregoing discus- Pragmatic Attitude edited by John Dewey. New
sion(s). First, some people find the historical and York: Holt, (3-69).
theoretical origins of ideas to be interesting. That Dewey, J. (1920). Reconstruction in philosophy. New
is, they value the history of ideas, and establish- York: Holt
39
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010Bill Warren
Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct. New Warren, W.G. (Bill). (2000). Personal construct psy-
York: Holt. chology, neo-structuralism and hermeneutics. In
Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty: A study of J.W.Scheer (Ed.). The person in society: Chal-
the relation between knowledge and action. Lon- lenges to a constructivist theory. Giessen: Psycho-
don: George Allen and Unwin. sozial-Verlag (79-89).
Dewey, J. (1932). Philosophy and human nature. Warren, W. G. (Bill). (2003). Pragmatism and reli-
Dewey, J. (1934). A common faith. New Haven: Yale gion: Dewey’s two influences?. In Fay Fransella,
University Press. International Handbook of Personal Construct
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New Psychology. London: John Wiley and Sons. (387-
York: Macmillan. 394).
Dewey, J. (1966). Democracy and education. New Zelhart, P. F., & Jackson, T. T. (1983). George A.
York: The Free press. Original work published Kelly, 1931-1943: Environmental Influences on a
1916 (Collier-Macmillan). developing theorist. In J. Adams-Weber & J. C.
Dewey, J. (1972). The reflex arc in psychology. In Mancuso (Eds.). Applications of Personal Con-
The Early Works 1882-1898, Volume 5 Carbon- struct Theory. Toronto: Academic Press. (137-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press. (96-109). 154)
Original work Published 1896.
Dewey, J., & Tufts, J. H. (1908). Ethics. New York:
Henry Holt. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Domenici, D. J. (2008). Implications of hermeneutic
constructivism for personal construct theory: Im-
Bill Warren holds an appointment as a Conjoint
aginally construing the nonhuman world. Journal
of Constructivist Psychology, 22, 25-42. Associate Professor in the University of Newcas-
Gallie, W. B. (1952). Peirce and Pragmatism. Har- tle, Australia having retired from full-time aca-
mondsworth: Penguin demic work teaching Philosophy, in 2006. A
Fransella, F. (1995). George Kelly. London: Sage. member of the Colleges of Clinial and Forensic
James, W. (1907) Talks to teachers on psychology: Psychology of the Australian Psychological So-
And to students on some of life’s ideals. London: ciety he continues the private clinical practice in
Longmans, Green, and Co. Original work 1899. which he has been engaged for some twenty-five
Kneller, G. (1971). Introduction to the philosophy of years.
education. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc.. Email: William.Warren@newcastle.edu.au
Second edition, original work published 1964.
Home Page:
McWilliams, S. A. (2009) William James pragmatism
and PCP. Personal Construct Theory and Prac- http://www.newcastle.edu.au/research-
tice, 6, 109-119. centre/sorti/people/bill-warren.html
Meyer, A.E. (1949). The development of education in
the twentieth century. New York: Prentice-Hall,
Inc. Second edition. (First published1939) REFERENCE
Novak, J. (1983). J. M. (1983). Personal construct
theory and other perceptual pedagogies. In J. Warren, B. (2010). Kelly’s personal construct
Adams-Webber & J. C. Mancuso (Eds.). Applica- psychology and Dewey’s pragmatism: some di-
tions of Personal Construct Theory. Toronto, rect and some ‘intellectual context’ aspects.
Academic Press. (317-329)
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 32-40,
Warren, W.G. (1996). The egalitarian outlook as the
underpinning of the theory of personal constructs. 2010
In B. Walker & D. Kalekin-Fishman (Eds.). The
Construction of Group Realities: Culture, Society, (Retrieved from
and Personal Construct Theory. Malabar, Florida: http://www.pcp-
Krieger Publishing Company (103-119). net.org/journal/pctp10/warren10.pdf)
Warren, W.G. (Bill). (1998). Philosophical founda-
tions of personal construct psychology. London: Received: 12 April 2010 - Accepted: 25 July 2010 –
Routledge. Published 7 August 2010
40
Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010You can also read
