Personal construct theory and the psychotherapeutic interview

TLDR: A good many years ago when I first set for myself the task of writing a manual of clinical procedures it was with the idea that psychologists needed to get their feet on the ground, and I was out to help them do it as mentioned in this paper.

Abstract: A good many years ago when I first set for myself the task of writing a manual of clinical procedures it was with the idea that psychologists needed to get their feet on the ground, and I was out to help them do it. Other scientists had gotten their feet on the ground; why couldn ' t we? Elsewhere all about us there were those hardy breeds who had penetrated the frontiers of reality with boldness and forthrightness. Practical men they were who, with each bedrock discovery, discredited all those generations of anemic philosophers who never dared venture beyond the comforts of their own redundancies. And yet here was the gloomiest vista of all, the mind of man, only one step a w a y a deep cavern so close behind our very own eyes and still enshadowed in Delphian mystery. And here we were, psychologists, standing on one foot wanting very much to be scientis ts--and more than a little defensive about it, too-cha t te r ing away and so frightened of what we might see that we never dared take a close look. Fancying myself thus as a practical man and seeing science as something which was, above all things, practical, it seemed that whatever I could do to bring psychologists into contact with human beings, novel as that might be, would help extricate psychology f rom the mishmash of its abstruse definitions. So I proposed to write as much as I knew about how to come to terms with living persons, I took as my prototypes the ones who confided in me, particularly those who were in trouble, because, as I saw it, when a person is in trouble he acts more like what he is and less like some-