0.18 Cognitive perspectives on personality development  (Page 10/30)

Discussion Question: Many psychologists, including Kelly and Carl Rogers, consider creativity to be an essential aspect of healthy psychological development. Have you ever entered into an unfamiliar situation and tried to be creative in how you handled it? Was it difficult to set aside preconceived notions about how to act, or do you find it easy to try different things in new situations?

The Role of the Psychotherapist

Kelly was first and foremost a clinical psychologist, and his writings are full of practical examples related to clinical work. Theories are of little value unless they are rooted in the values of the psychologists using them. Kelly considered this to be particularly true of clinical psychologists, since they are routinely dealing with clients (Kelly, 1955b). Kelly believed that the role of the psychotherapist involves not only the training and perspectives of the therapist, but also a need to understand the client, and essential ethical considerations:

The role of the psychotherapist involves keen alertness to what the client expects from psychotherapy and the initial acceptance of a wide variety of client misperceptions of what psychotherapy is…it involves certain ethical obligations that transcend mere legal status. (pg. 618; Kelly, 1955b)

In his typically practical style, Kelly provides lengthy lists of what psychotherapy means to the client, the client’s conceptualization of the therapist, the clinician’s conceptualization of their role, and basic approaches to revising the client’s constructs. At the beginning of therapy, it is unlikely that the client has a good concept of what therapy is and what it can accomplish. Nonetheless, the client has some construction of what will take place in therapy. The complaint presented by the client says something about what he or she thinks therapy can accomplish, and some see therapy as an end in itself. However, the reality is that therapy is a means to an end, and that end should be generating movement forward on the part of the client. In contrast, some clients are so ready for change that the therapist must be cautious in interpreting the client’s state of mind (Kelly, 1955b). Just as the client makes predictions about therapy, they will also have an initial conceptualization of the therapist. They may construe the therapist as a parent, an absolver of guilt, a companion, or even a threat. Hopefully, according to Kelly, the client may construe the therapist as a representative of reality. In this case, the client may feel free to experiment with his or her constructs without fear of failure. Most importantly, how the client construes the therapist will have a dramatic effect on their relationship:

From the client’s conceptualization of psychotherapy comes the role he expects to play and the role he expects the therapist to play…He may be bitterly disappointed in the therapist’s enactment of the expected role. He may stretch his perceptions of the therapist in order to construe him in the manner he expected to construe him rather than in the manner the therapist seeks to be construed….The client may then feel lost and insecure in the psychotherapeutic relationship. (pg. 575; Kelly, 1955b)