Personal construct theory and constructivist mathematics

Fay Fransella

Centre for Personal Construct Psychology, The Sail Loft, Mulberry Quay, Falmouth, Cornwall (UK)

Abstract
Kelly is still sometimes castigated for not having named those philosophers, psychologists or sociologists who had influenced his thinking. This started me wondering why. Having read his unpublished book Understandable Psychology (1932) I knew that he was widely read well before starting on the 1955 work. Since we can be seen as being influenced by our past, I struggled to find out what ideas he might have gained from his study of physics.

I found what, for me, was an answer. It is reported that a physicist once commented that per-sonal construct theory was a good theory of physics. I put these ideas forward at the 1981 Congress (Fransella, 1983). While that did not set the personal construct world on fire, I have continued my interest in George Kelly´s intellectual as well as personal past.

In my writing of the book George Kelly, I re-read Denny Hinkle in Don´s edited book Per-spectives in Personal Construct Theory (1970) and there is Kelly quoted as saying "I think mathematics is the pure instance of construct functioning - the model of human behavior". So off I step into another totally strange world. A world far more difficult to get into than phys-ics. But tucked away in amongst the mathematical symbols is constructivist or intuitionist mathematics. I think here is another thread that, couple with the ideas from physics, suggests where the majority of Kelly´s thinking stems from.

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