The Family Construct Approach andPsychosomatic Research

by

H. G. Procter BSc. PhD. Dip. Psych.

(shortened version for publication)

Paper presented at the Seventeenth European Conference onPsychosomatic Research, Marburg, West Germany.

September 4th - 9th, 1988

In the thirty three years since Kelly's original opus the

creative potential of construct theory continues to be

realised in a steadily accumulating literature . Kelly's

influence, often unacknowledged, is evident in a wide

variety of writings.

My own work has involved using and extending Kelly's

theory for the study of and therapeutic intervention into

families. Kelly's ideas appealed because they resolved many

of the problems attached to psychoanalytic, behavioural and

cognitive psychologies (Procter, 1978). But Kelly's theory

was still primarily a psychology of the individual. Also

about this time, in the late sixties, I began to come across

the interactional literature on the family - Watzlawick,

Haley, Bateson - and was persuaded by the arguments that for

a full understanding of normal and pathological human

situations it is necessary to use an interpersonal, systemic

view that transcends intrapsychic theories. But in spite of

the tremendous advance in our understanding that the

systemic and cybernetic approach provided us with, it left a

rather impersonal and even mechanistic view of family

processes.

Laing had pointed out how vital it was in understanding

a situation to be able to enter the point of view of each of

the participants of the drama. This has for me been proved

valid time and time again both in my own experience and in

clinical practice. Personal construct theory became for me

the tool for beginning a systematic and rigourous approach

to the family that, whilst remaining consistent, would

simultaneously act as a descriptive system, a research

paradigm (for example in the repertory grid research with

families) , a tool for therapy and a way of subsuming and

reconciling the incompatablities of previous models. This

work has been described in a series of papers (Procter 1981,

1985a, 1985b, 1986, Dallos and Procter 1984).

Flowing from Kelly's person~as-a-scientist metaphor is

a vital principle, which was emphasised by Don Bannister,

who contributed so much before his recent death. This is the

principle of reflexivity - that any psychological theorising

should be able simultaneously to account for itself as well

as its subject matter. In practice this is an extremely

useful principle involving a continuous cross-check between

the content of the theory, the process of theorising and

back again. As far as families are concerned this means a

basic view that every family member is a person, like us,

struggling to make sense of the family situation, applying

theories and constructs to anticipate the events of family

life. The members are themselves systems theorists, whether

they know it or not, making constructions about the

relationships in the family and acting in accordance with

these constructions.

This principle is one of the attributes which construct

theory rather surprisingly shares with Hegel and indeed

dialectical thinking lies at the heart of Kelly's

psychology, a tradition he presumably picked up through

Dewey, who had been a Hegelian in his early career. Kelly

also has interesting correspondences at a philosophical

level with Marx's materialist dialectics which may open up

some interesting discussions with colleagues from Eastern

Europe.

The person in the system

Kelly insists on putting the "person9* at the centre of

his theory. Each of us makes choices. Constructs are

basically alternatives, not only in construing or thought

but in practice. It is essential to have this concept if one

is to do proper justice to the ethical issues of personal

responsibility in our model. Of course a person is not

simply free to generate any reality, and is constrained to

work within a construct system that is embedded in the

culture, family traditions and particular personal

experiences (Procter and Parry, 1978).

In this view, a family system consists of what emerges

when a number of people, each a person anticipating,

hypothesising, choosing are put together in the same family.

The family construct system consists of the sum of the

individual construct systems of each member in dynamic

relation with each other. The events or "evidence" that each

member is processing consists of the actions and opinions of

the others with whom they are interacting. There is

therefore the tendency for the family reality to "drift" in

idiosyncratic ways, in a manner not under the control of any

particular member. The family construct system has, as it

were, a life of its own. It is an entity in itself which

provides choice and constraint to the individual members. It

can be seen how this is rather different to Kelly's original

view, where the individual construct system was seen as the

most important determining entity.

As Kelly says of individuals, the assumption is that

each family has its own unique reality arising out of its

traditions and melded (or left fragmented) by the

negotiation that occurs between the partners of realities

built up in each of their families of origin. The family

construct system consists of a shared set of constructs. The

construing of each individual family member is not received

passively, however, but is built up painstakingly anew in

daily experience using the constructs on hand in the family

context. Each individual member is unique, but construing is

only evoked or even brought into existence in a particular

social context.

Bach family can be characterised according to

attributes of its construing system: constricted, tight,

loose, polarised and so on. The "boundary" of the family

system can be seen as the cleavage line discriminating (in

the family's construing) who is in or out of the group or a

subgroup. Indeed constructs may actually be formed from the

elements or figures in the system, even though we normally

think of contructs as generating our own particular version

of reality.

An important design feature of a theory of the family

is that it is anthropologically sound. By this I mean that

it allows one to enter the study of a family with the

minimum of preconceived assumptions that we might impose on

the situation so easily. It is an "open" theory, the

particular details being "filled in" as we proceed. This is

certainly not true of many earlier traditions in individual

and family therapy or in previous theories of family

functioning. There is no model here of "healthy functioning"

or "normal" family life. Indeed, within this model, when a

family has problems this is seen as intimately tied up with

how an external referring agent or figure is construing the

family. This might be such that a drift toward increased

polarisation of the construing occurs rather than problem

resolution. The crucial business occurs at the interface

between the family and the external system rather than being

simply internal to the family.

All this may sound rather philosophical but in actual

practice the theory has simplicity and elegance, attributes

I would value highly in our work, proven by the ability of

unsophisticated students in the health service setting to

grasp and utilise the method. Students are encouraged to

build up a picture of the family's construing in a step-by-

step jigsaw fashion. For example, analysis may start with a

particular dyad in the family at a particularly crucial

point in their interaction. The picture is built up in

levels. How they consrue themselves, each other, adding how

a third construes the pair's relationship, how each

construes the dyadic relations, how a forth construes the

threesome until sufficient sense is made of the situation.

This picture is then tested in practice with the family,

using Kelly's famous dictum "if you don't know what is

happening, ask the client, he may just tell you"!

My experience suggests that the approach is of great

value in family (and individual) therapy. It is also useful

in, and indeed arose out of research. My own work with

repertory grids examining interpersonal perception and using

a pooled family grid with various measures is interesting

not only for the empirical data that it can reveal but also

because it reveals a kind of grammar, or a table of possible

permutations and combinations of interpersonal construing in

families. Guillem Feixas and his group in Barcelona are

using the method to tease out these kind of processes in

families with alcohol problems (Feixas et al, 1987).

I think more and more people are now becoming aware of

the power of this approach. In my own group I would mention

the work of Rudi Dallos and David Aldridge (1986, 1987,

1988) on deliberate self harm and suicide and on the

processes of handing on constructs down the generations of a

family. The Neimeyer brothers have been enormously

productive in their work on construing in marital

relationships (eg. Neimeyer and Neimeyer, 1985) and

Alexander and Follette (1986) have taken the theory into the

treatment of incest. Vetere and Gale (1987) carried out a

project involoving the intensive participant observation of

normal families and Rosemary Hayhow (1987) is researching

the families of stutterers. Cunningham and Davis have looked

at families with mental handicap and how to help them. David

Reiss's work (1981) has developed in a slightly different

way, but shows the theory operating in the context of

experimental social psychology. Kenny's (1986) work on

cancer and the link with physiological process represents

another exciting new direction.

Implications for research into psychosomatic processes

Most research on psychosomatic processes has been

limited by its reliance on very general psychological

concepts, such as emotional states and personality traits.

Looking at construing especially as it occurs specifically

in its relational context may break us out of this impasse.

As long as we investigate a general process such as

"anxiety" or "stress" we will only learn very general things

about the associated physiology - such as general arousal

levels.

Kelly criticised the tyrany of the contruct emotion-

versus- cognition that we so readily project on to the world

-and then suffer the consequences of the apparently

objective split. He then went on brilliantly to define

emotional states in a radical new way as aspects of

construct structure and transition. But this aspect of his

thinking seems still intrapsychic. Emotions are

fundamentally interpersonal matters, especially when we look

at the actual events in a microprocess time frame. The way

forward seems to be to investigate these processes by

focussing on moment-by-moment events in the life of the

family.

It is my belief that the crucial processes occur at

quite specific points in construing and at particular points

in the interaction of the family. This is observable

clinically time after time. For example, a bulimic girl

begins to feel sick at a strategic point in the interaction,

triggered by the physiological signs of flushing with anger

in her mother. Mother's anger, in turn is the result of an

anticipation of her daughter, based in the way she construes

her behaviour, perhaps as "manipulative". These two events

have become coupled or linked, but not directly, only

because they are construed in a particular way by the two of

them.

Physiologists will have to develop biochemical,

neuroelectric and other physiological techniques to "trap"

these ephemeral processes. With an understanding that they

are anchored in a more predicatable way in family

interaction, we should be able to proceed.

Conclusion

The construct approach to families and other

relationships throws much light on processes in a highly

specific and precise way and yet with a flexibility that

allows many older alternatives to be synthesised in a new

and consistent theoretical language. It also begs new

questions; or rather poses old questions in a new way

allowing new avenues research to proceed.

Most importantly and excitingly I think it poses a

challenge to traditional models of psychiatric and other

medical research which should allow an enormous step forward

to be made. This is achieved by providing a methodology

which focusses on illness processes in the context,

specifically, of the interpersonal construing surrounding

the illness events, rather than arbitrarilly isolating an

individual and divorcing the study from these. Psychiatry

and Psychosomatic medicine have been stuck conceptually for

decades, stuck with general categories which can only

provide general truths.

References

Aldridge,D. and Dallos, R. (1986) Distinguishing familieswhere suicidal behaviour is present from families wheresuicidal behaviour is absent. J. Fam. Ther. 8,243-252.

Alexander, P.C. and Follette, V.M. (1986) PersonalConstructs in the Group Treatment of Incest. In Neimeyer,Rand Neimeyer, 6.(eds) A Casebook in Personal ConstructTherapy Springer Publications, New York.

Cunningham, C. and Davis, H. (1985) Working with parents:Frameworks for Collaboration. Open University Press, MiltonKeynes.

Dallos, R and Aldridge,D (1986) Change: How do we recognizeit? J. Fam. Ther. 8, 45-49

Dallos, R. and Aldridge, D. (1987) Handing it on: FamilyConstructs, Symptoms and Choice. J. Fam. Ther. 9, 39-55.

Dallos, R. and Aldridge, D. (1988) Choice of Pathology andSystems of Construing. J. Strat. Syst. Ther. 7, 1, 27-41.

Dallos,R. and Procter,H.6. (1984) Family Processes:An Interactional View. D307 Social Psychology Course,Open University, Milton Keynes.

Feixas, G. , Cunillera, C. and Villegas, M. (1987) PCT andthe Systems Approach: A theoretical and methodologicalproposal for integration. Paper presented at 7th Internat.Congress on PCT. Memphis, TN.

Hayhow, R. (1987) Personal Construct Therapy with Childrenwho stutter and their Families. In: Ledy, C. StutteringTherapies: Practical Aproaches. Crooro Helm, Beckenham.

Kelly, G.A. (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs,Vols 1 & 2. Norton, New York.

Kenny, V. (1986) Family Somatics: A personal constructapproach to cancer. In Neimeyer,R and Neimeyer, G.(eds) ACasebook in Personal Construct Therapy SpringerPublications, New York.

Neimeyer, R. and Neimeyer G. (1985) Disturbed relationships:A personal construct view. In B u t t o n , E . ( e d ) PersonalConstruct Theory and Mental Health. Croon Helm,Beckenham, Kent.

Procter, H.G. (1978) Personal Construct Theory and theFamily: A theoretical and methodological study. Unpubl. PhDthesis, University of Bristol.

Procter,H.G. (1981) Family Construct Psychology: An approachto Understanding and Treating Families. In Walrond-Sk inner ,S . ( ed ) Developments in Family Therapy.Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

Procter,H.G. (1985a) A Construct Approach to Family Therapyand Systems intervention. In B u t t o n , E . ( e d ) PersonalConstruct Theory and Mental Health. Croom Helm,Beckenham, Kent.

Procter,H.G. (1985b) Repertory Grid Techniques in FamilyTherapy and Research. In B e a i l , N (ed) Repertory GridTechnique: Application in Clinical and EducationalSettings. Croom Helm, Beckenham, Kent.

Procter,H.G. (1986) Change in the Family Construct System:The therapy of a mute and withdrawn schizophrenic patient.In Neimeyer,R and Neimeyer, G.(eds) A Casebook in PersonalConstruct Therapy Springer Publications, New York.

Procter,H.G. and Parry,G. (1978) Constraint and Freedom: TheSocial Origin of Personal Constructs . InFransel la ,F . (ed) Personal Construct Psychology1977, Academic Press, London.

Reiss, D. (1981) The Family's Contruction of Reality.Harvard University Press, London.

Vetere, A. and Gale, A. (1987) Ecological Studies of FamilyLife. Wiley, Chichester.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Joady Brennan for her suggestions in editing themanuscript and to Tracy Flannaghan for helping with the typing.

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