Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 18. Kelly: Psychology of
Personal Constructs(^556) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
With the dust bowl and the Great Depression, however, he soon became convinced
that he should “pursue something more humanitarian than physiological psychol-
ogy” (Kelly, 1969a, p. 48). Consequently, he decided to become a psychotherapist,
counseling college and high school students in the Hays community. True to his psy-
chology of personal constructs, Kelly pointed out that his decision was not dictated
by circumstancesbut rather by his interpretationof events; that is, his own con-
struction of reality altered his life course.
Everything around us “calls,” if we choose to heed. Moreover, I have never been
completely satisfied that becoming a psychologist was even a very good idea in
the first place.... The only thing that seems clear about my career in psychology
is that it was I who got myself into it and I who have pursued it. (p. 49)
Now a psychotherapist, Kelly obtained legislative support for a program of
traveling psychological clinics in Kansas. He and his students traveled widely
throughout the state, providing psychological services during those hard economic
times. During this period, he evolved his own approach to therapy, abandoning the
Freudian techniques that he had previously used (Fransella, 1995).
During World War II, Kelly joined the Navy as an aviation psychologist. After
the war, he taught at the University of Maryland for a year and then, in 1946, joined
the faculty at Ohio State University as a professor and director of their psychologi-
cal clinic. There he worked with Julian Rotter (see Chapter 17), who succeeded him
as director of the clinic. In 1965, he accepted a position at Brandeis University,
where, for a brief time, he was a colleague of A. H. Maslow (see Chapter 10).
From his days at Fort Hays State, Kelly began to formulate a theory of per-
sonality. Finally, in 1955, he published his most important work, The Psychology of
Personal Constructs.This two-volume book, reprinted in 1991, contains the whole
of Kelly’s personality theory and is one of only a few of his works published during
his lifetime.
Kelly spent several summers as a visiting professor at such schools as the Uni-
versity of Chicago, the University of Nebraska, the University of Southern Califor-
nia, Northwestern University, Brigham Young University, Stanford University, Uni-
versity of New Hampshire, and City College of New York. During those postwar
years, he became a major force in clinical psychology in the United States. He was
president of both the Clinical and the Consulting Divisions of the American Psy-
chological Association and was also a charter member and later president of the
American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology.
Kelly died on March 6, 1967, before he could complete revisions of his theory
of personal constructs.
Kelly’s diverse life experiences, from the wheat fields of Kansas to some of the
major universities of the world, from education to labor relations, from drama and
debate to psychology, are consistent with his theory of personality, which empha-
sizes the possibility of interpreting events from many possible angles.
Kelly’s Philosophical Position
Is human behavior based on reality or on people’s perception of reality? George
Kelly would say both. He did not accept Skinner’s (see Chapter 15) position that be-
havior is shaped by the environment, that is, reality. On the other hand, he also rejected
550 Part V Learning Theories