Emotions and personal constructs

Holger Kirsch, Jochen Jordan

Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University of Frankfurt / Main, (Germany)

Abstract
The Personal Constructs elicited in the Repertory Grid raise the pretension to cover important and significant emotional perceptions of the individual. The paper tries to show a possibility to classify personal constructs as verbal expressions of significant emotions.

It is intended to present some results of emotion theories and emotion research and to connect these results with Kelly’s theory (e.g. the 11th corollary). The development of a classification system of emotions characterizing the emotional meaning of the distinction which is made by the individual constructs in the personal construct system will help the researches to get a new kind of information to understand the individual or a group of individuals. The Personal Constructs of an anorexic woman during in-patient treatment will be classified through emotion categories and a list of emotion words.

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