Larry M. Leitner

Terror, Risk, And Reverence: Experiential Personal Construct Psychotherapy

Abstract This paper asserts the experiential underpinnings of personal construct psychotherapy by distinguishing between the process of construing and the content of constructs. Three cases that emphasize the importance of construing core ROLE reconstruction as an experiential phenomenon are briefly discussed. The Sociality and Choice Corollaries, which provide the theoretical justification for experiential personal construct psychotherapy, are elaborated. This elaboration places greater importance on understanding the process of evolution that is the person instead of focusing on the specific content or structure of constructs. In particular, deep interpersonal (ROLE) relationships are seen as essential yet potentially terrifying. The struggles of therapist and client around the basic issue of the terror of risking versus the emptiness of avoiding ROLE relationships are discussed. The discussion emphasizes the critical nature of being with the other person as opposed to focusing on changing specific cogn...

Sociality and optimal functioning

Abstract This article outlines an approach to optimal functioning based on an elaboration of the Sociality corollary of Kellys (1955) personal construct psychology. Nine aspects of optimal functioning (discrimination, flexibility, creativity, responsibility, openness, commitment, courage, forgiveness, and reverence) are discussed in terms of their theoretical, empirical, and clinical implications. All of these aspects are viewed as an elaboration of empathy.

Breaking Out of the Mainstream: The Evolution of Peer Support Alternatives to the Mental Health System

The consumer/survivor/ex-patient (c/s/x) movement has been instrumental in the development of a variety of peer-support alternatives to traditional mental health services in both the United States in Canada. This article explores the role of the c/s/x movement in the creation of such alternatives and discusses the various ways peer support is defined and has been put into practice. We also discuss the potential for future alliances and dialogues between progressive mental health professionals and the c/s/x movement as both groups seek ways to reconceptualize mental illness and recovery outside of the medical model paradigm.

How Using the Dsm Causes Damage: A Client’s Report

This case study illustrates the potential for the application of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnoses to exacerbate clients’ symptoms and inhibit the healing process in psychotherapy. Passages are excerpted from therapy sessions to demonstrate that the multiple diagnoses imposed on “Steve” coalesced into his core construct of himself as “crazy.” When his diagnoses became internalized as a construct, his world became viewed through a lens that believed itself to be defective. The use of diagnoses may also have negative consequences for the process of psychotherapy. Alternatives to traditional DSM diagnoses are reviewed. It is proposed that diagnoses should be tentative and rejected if they reify negative self-concepts and do not promote change in clients.

Adolescent Mourning and Parental Death.

Ten male and ten female young adults, who had lost a parent by death as an adolescent, were given the Expanded Texas Grief Inventory (ETGI) in order to explore the bereavement process for this group as compared to an adult group previously studied [1, 2]. The ETGI included both “Past Behaviors and Feelings” and “Present Feelings” items. The young adults reported more intense shock, disbelief, and a sense of loss than the adult group at or around the time of the loss of the parent (i.e., as an adolescent). Further, greater anger at the deceased, sleep disturbance, increased dream activity, and irritability was reported by the young adult group as compared to the adult norm group. “Present feelings” items that were significant indicate issues of fairness around the death of the parent, identification with the deceased, an intense sense of loss that is very personal, feelings that the parent who died is irreplaceable, and a strong presence of the deceased in dreams and other people. Somatic concerns and identifications with the lost parent were less of a concern for the adolescent group than the adult group. Lastly, gender differences were explored within the young adult group. Women reported a higher degree of mourning accompanied by crying as well as feeling the need to cry more than men. Women tended to identify more with the deceased than men; this led to acquiring the habits and interests of the deceased as well as feeling the deceased was still with them.

Dispositionl assessment techniques in experiential personal construct psychotherapy

Abstract Dispositional assessment involves utilizing assessment information to arrive at treatment options (dispositions) as opposed to traditional diagnoses. While Kellys (1955) repertory grid can be used for such purposes, the grid also suffers from many inherent limitations (e.g., mathematical limitations inherent in inferring construct relatedness, higher degrees of structure than may be optimal in certain situations, and excessive time requirements in certain clinical situations). After elaborating on these limitations, this article presents four alternative assessment devices (the self-characterization sketch, pyramid procedures, laddering procedures, and interview methodologies). Each of these procedures is illustrated through an assessment of a severely disturbed client. The advantages and disadvantages of each procedure are discussed.

Validation of therapist interventions in psychotherapy: Clarity, ambiguity, and subjectivity

Abstract The validation and invalidation of therapist interventions are critical to psychotherapy. Therapeutic interventions are crucial tests of the therapists construction of the client. Thus, understanding the process of the clients validation or invalidation of interventions is central to understanding the clients core constructs and developing a ROLE relationship with the client. A theoretical framework suggesting ways in which the therapist may experience validations is presented. This is followed by a discussion of the complexity and hence ambiguity and subjectivity of the experience of validation in psychotherapy.

Death Threat, Parental Loss, and Interpersonal Style: A Personal Construct Investigation.

Abstract Twenty people who had experienced the death of a parent between the ages of 12 and 18 were compared to 22 people whose parents had not divorced, separated, or died using two measures of death threat, one based upon an Interpersonal Repertory Grid (IRG) and the second being the provided form of the Threat Index (TIp) as well as a measure of interpersonal style, the Fundamental Interpersonal Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B). The death-loss group had significantly higher scores on the Wanted-Inclusion scale of the FIRO-B as compared to the control. Thus, they tended to exhibit a strong interpersonal style marked by a desire to be included and noticed. For the Wanted-Affection scale of the FIRO-B, death-loss group males scored higher than control group males, but death-loss group females scored lower on the same scale than female control group members. Further, the death-loss group had lower death threat scores, as measured by the IRG, than the control group. Last, no evidence was found for the role of ...

The Immovable Object Versus the Irresistible Force: Problems and Opportunities for Humanistic Psychology

The immovable force of an increasingly reductionistic approach to understanding and treating psychological life and the irresistible force of people searching desperately for solutions to struggles that allow for meaning, purpose, and richness in life create serious challenges and great opportunities for humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology, if it can grasp these opportunities, has the chance to transform the field of psychology. To do so, humanistic psychology will have to deal adequately with three major manifestations of this reductionistic approach to psychology: the DSM as the means for understanding human distress, manualized treatments as the only scientifically based treatments of distress, and randomized controlled trials as the best way of determining treatment effectiveness. This article, after describing each of these reductionistic challenges, briefly reviews the current state of the humanistic response and concludes with a template that, if followed, offers us the chance to create a science that is both intellectually rigorous and experientially rich.

Constructivist therapy with serious disturbances

Abstract There have been few systematic applications of constructivist principles to the therapy of severe disturbances, despite an increased interest in constructivist therapies (e.g., Neimeyer & Mahoney, 1995) and data suggest that psychotherapy with seriously disturbed persons is cost effective (Karon, 1992). We address this neglect in two ways. First we describe four important principles of constructivist therapy (the credulous approach, the invitational mode, transitive diagnosis, and optimal therapeutic distance) and illustrate the implications of these principles in the therapy of severely disturbed persons. Next, we discuss constructivist understandings of hallucinations, delusions, and destructive acting out, symptoms seen in severe disturbances that are anxiety arousing for therapists. Finally, the therapeutic implications of these constructivist conceptualizations are discussed.