Chapter 19 Kelly: Psychology of Personal Constructs 569Biography of George Kelly
Of all the personality theorists discussed in this book, George Kelly had the most
unusual variegated experiences—mostly involving education, as either a student or
a teacher.
George Alexander Kelly was born April 28, 1905, on a farm near Perth,
Kansas, a tiny, almost nonexistent town 35 miles south of Wichita. George was
the only child of Elfleda M. Kelly, a former schoolteacher, and Theodore V. Kelly,
an ordained Presbyterian minister. By the time Kelly was born, his father had given
up the ministry in favor of becoming a Kansas farmer. Both parents were well
educated, and both helped in the formal education of their son, a fortunate circum-
stance because Kelly’s schooling was rather erratic.
When Kelly was 4 years old, the family moved to eastern Colorado, where
his father staked a claim on some of the last free land in that part of the country.
While in Colorado, Kelly attended school only irregularly, seldom for more than
a few weeks at a time (Thompson, 1968).
Lack of water drove the family back to Kansas, where Kelly attended four dif-
ferent high schools in 4 years. At first he commuted to high school, but at age 13, he
was sent away to school in Wichita. From that time on, he mostly lived away from
home. After graduation, he spent 3 years at Friends University in Wichita and 1 year
at Park College in Parkville, Missouri. Both schools had religious affiliations, which
may explain why many of Kelly’s later writings are sprinkled with biblical references.
Kelly was a man of many and diverse interests. His undergraduate degree
was in physics and mathematics, but he was also a member of the college debate
team and, as such, became intensely concerned with social problems. This interest
led him to the University of Kansas, where he received a master’s degree with a
major in educational sociology and a minor in labor relations and sociology.
During the next few years, Kelly moved several times and held a variety of
positions. First, he went to Minneapolis, where he taught soapbox oratory at a
special college for labor organizers, conducted classes in speech for the American
Bankers Association, and taught government to an Americanization class for pro-
spective citizens (Kelly, 1969a). Then in 1928, he moved to Sheldon, Iowa, where
he taught at a junior college and coached drama. While there, he met his future wife,
Gladys Thompson, an English teacher at the same school. After a year and a half,
he moved back to Minnesota, where he taught a summer session at the University
of Minnesota. Next, he returned to Wichita to work for a few months as an aero-
nautical engineer. From there, he went to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland
as an exchange student, receiving an advanced professional degree in education.
At this point in his life, Kelly “had dabbled academically in education, soci-
ology, economics, labor relations, biometrics, speech pathology, and anthropology,
and had majored in psychology for a grand total of nine months” (Kelly, 1969a,
p. 48). After returning from Edinburgh, however, he began in earnest to pursue a
career in psychology. He enrolled at the State University of Iowa and, in 1931, com-
pleted a PhD with a dissertation on common factors in speech and reading disabilities.
Once again, Kelly returned to Kansas, beginning his academic career in 1931
at Fort Hays State College in Hays, Kansas, by teaching physiological psychology.
With the dust bowl and the Great Depression, however, he soon became convinced