Saying I love Kelly’s personal construct psychology is an understatement. My entire professional identity revolves around his theory, and I strive to embody it, even in the most mundane situations. However, like anyone, I have my critiques, and one of my main issues is that Kelly undersold his own theory when defining the goal of psychotherapy. It’s as if he set up a complex philosophical and psychological epic, only to conclude it abruptly, not with a bang, but a whimper. Kelly’s definition of the goal of therapy—to alleviate the complaint—feels anticlimactic, reminiscent of what any modern CBT therapist might say.
As a therapist, I believe psychotherapy becomes truly meaningful to a person only when the complaint ceases to be its main focus. I once wrote a paper on this, although, like most of my messy theoretical musings, it didn’t spark much beyond a few raised eyebrows. My argument was simple: the goal of therapy shouldn’t be merely to alleviate the client’s complaint but to help form what Richard Rorty calls an Ironist —a person who incorporates constructivist theory as their modus vivendi. Sure, resolving the complaint is helpful and useful, but empowering clients to understand and reconstruct their complaints in the future? Helping clients see their identities as contingent and hypothetical constructs? Now, that’s truly a game changer.
As time went on, I started to question whether my vision of psychotherapy was truly sustainable. While I see significant benefits in this approach and witness my clients‘ lives change, improve, and take unexpected, creative turns, I began to wonder if I can still rightfully call it psychotherapy in a world where CBT has become synonymous with the term. CBT, with its somewhat simplistic ideas about the goals of therapy, aims to teach a few coping skills and reduce a person’s allegedly irrational thinking. Meanwhile, I envision a longer, more optimistic process of restructuring subjectivity and not merely putting band aids on it.
Last night, my colleague Milan Damjanac unknowingly gave me a phrase I’d been searching for: „constructivist analysis.“ This is what I want to advocate for. We were talking about the nature of the complaints we often hear in therapy and what they reveal about how clients view themselves. Many people seek therapy to be more efficient, happier, or less anxious—or to „cope“ with a range of pre-defined DSM labels, often framed as chronic conditions or understood by our clients as personal failures, both genetic and psychological. They’re just born faulty and now they need their mechanic to tighten or loosen up some screws to get them to function optimally. Yet they rarely come to understand what their anxiety (for example) reveals about the lives they’ve chosen or, worse, the lives they were thrust into by impersonal cultural forces. Instead of questioning their condition and finding ways to liberate themselves, they try to become more efficient machines, unwittingly sustaining oppressive social and economic systems. You can almost hear Sartre shouting, “They are living in bad faith!”
This tendency to treat the mind and body as objects, shaped into generic, replaceable parts, is sometimes painful to witness—especially for someone who takes Kelly’s call to “become something other than what we are“ seriously. I may be a cog in the machine, but the Choice Corollary tells me that I can choose not to be that, at any given moment. Kelly’s constructivism offers much more than merely „fixing“ people so they can function better as cogs in the machine. It’s a theory of possibility and creativity, one that sees potential instead of utility, freedom instead of obedience.
Still, I recognize that this is where psychotherapy seems to be heading, and it may be inevitable given the success of the cognitive-behavioral counterrevolution. Therapists are expected to act as compassionate mechanics who use techniques that bring near immediate relief, always, of course, evidence-based. Perhaps, to an extent, there’s a legitimate need for this—after all, a certain level of functionality is required to pursue an authentic existence. Life in perpetual motion isn’t for the faint-hearted! But is this really what we are going to satisfy ourselves with, knowing the revolutionary potential of Kelly’s thinking?
Constructivist analysis can push us beyond what modern psychotherapy currently aims for and certainly beyond what insurance companies and medical statisticians would like to see. Like the distinction between psychoanalytic therapy and psychoanalysis, we might see this as a branch of constructivist psychology—one that leans more toward philosophical inquiry and away from being a compassionate mechanic.
However, unlike psychoanalysis, constructivist analysis would offer something radical and liberating. Psychoanalysis, fascinating as it may be, isn’t exactly a technology for producing change, as much as it is a technology for self-knowledge. Constructivism is both of these things and constructivist analysis could easily result in genuine authenticity, where a person takes ownership of their choices, their epistemological limitations, and relational nature – and all the power to change that comes with it. In this process, the therapist is not a skilled mechanic of the soul but a benevolent companion on the client’s journey. Unlike psychoanalysis, constructivist analysis wouldn’t focus on digging through the murky past to explain current dissatisfaction and neuroses. While these may be useful and often important to understand, they wouldn’t be the crux of the method. Kelly gave us a rich theoretical framework for conducting a holistic analysis—one that empowers people to author their own life stories in meaningful and sustainable ways, not merely explicate how they were determined by their past.
Constructivist analysis could transform Kelly’s theory into something even more beneficial—a method that enables people to create their own philosophy for living. A journey toward authenticity, as Sartre defined it: „Authenticity consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation, in assuming the responsibilities and risks it involves, and in accepting it… sometimes in horror and hate.“
Constructivist analysis would certainly have more ambitious goals than psychotherapy and could serve as an alternative method for personal growth – a reconstruction of psychotherapy, development without medicalization and without pathologization, beyond symptom reduction and management. Constructivist analysis would liberate the rebellious streak inherent in Kelly’s psychology. After all, he began his theorizing by abandoning the traditional language of psychology and reconstruing it entirely. Why not do the same with psychotherapy?