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© British Association of Social Workers

Personal Construct Theory and Psychological Changes Related to Social Work Training

J. BRYAN TULLY

Bryan Tully is a Clinical Psychologist at the Department of Psychiatry and the Child Development Centre Charing Cross Hospital (Fulham)

Summary

This paper summarizes Personal Construct Theory and its most developed experimental investigating technique, the Role Construct Repertory Grid. Issues in professional training in adjacent professions are examined for relevant parallels to social work in ‘personal change’. The specific notion of emotion as change in the mode of information processing is introduced through the neuropsychological model put forward by Pribram and Melges. Personal Construct Theory is presented as congruent with that model for dealing with uncertainty, and as particularly suitable for examining personal change in social work training. Studies comparing the Personal Construct Systems of social work students through training, with professionally qualified social workers are reviewed in some detail. It is concluded that the processes involved in social work education are corrigible and, because of the nature of their characteristics, may lead a person to develop desirable, sensitive, articulate and imaginative ways of construing people and personal problems, or to oversimple, rigid, impersonal and finally incompetent modes of construing, Suggestions are made as to how an understanding of Personal Construct Theory can help social workers involved in training, to deal with this problem.


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