The personal construct and language: Toward a rehabilitation of Kelly’s “inner outlook”

Abstract

The core consideration with which George Kelly is concerned is distilled in his suggestion that the psychology of personal constructs represents an attempt to catch a glimpse of the person going about the business of being human. Whatever the business of being human is for Kelly, he is clear that he wishes to understand that business from the perspective of those who are going about it. To use Kelly’s words, he wants to take the perspective of the “inward outlook” and in so doing move away from the “outward inlook,” providing a radical rethink of the psychology that was contemporary of his time. This article will suggest that the unsophisticated way that Kelly dealt with language has implications for the theoretical carriage of this “inner outlook” and opens up Personal Construct Psychology to elaboration in the direction of a more sophisticated account of language. This article will culminate in a suggestion that Personal Construct Psychology make a more tight hermeneutic turn to Hermeneutic Constructivism.