I got lost this month.
My small-sized brain could not
understand why prominent people and public figures kept talking nonsense. Frank lies were thrown in our
faces. Public declarations that were affronts
to common sense were made. I would not
consider them stupid. Experience told me
that it was usually those calling others stupid who were themselves stupid. These prominent people and public figures were
well known to be reliable and smart. They
were supported by people I respected. Even
for the nonsense, the people I respected kept their faith in those prominent
people and public figures.
There must be reasons behind
their behaviors. Such reasons must be
beyond my ability to comprehend. I had
thought about Buddhism. Could it be
collective karma? This explanation did
have some calming effects when you found lies thrown in your face. But it did not offer much help in explaining
individual behavior. It was the same for
my favorite Mappo Theory. Well, if you are
reading this
Editorial, that means the world has not ended by December 21.
I turned to psychology to seek
for hypotheses and theories to explain human behaviors. I came across personality theories. Personality could be defined as “psychological quantities that contribute to
an individual’s enduring and distinctive patterns of feeling, thinking and
behaving.”[1] There had been constant searches and
researches trying to classify, to understand, to predict and to change human
behaviors. In the recent hundred years,
personality theories went in a circular fashion. It went through biological theories, psychoanalytic
theories, type theories, trait theories, social learning theories, the Big Five
theories, and then returned to biological theories. Yet,
there was not a single unified and simple personality theory that could fulfill
all these functions. Among them, I found
the Personal Construct Theory by George Kelly enlightening when applied to the
above scenario.
George A Kelly (1905-1967) was a
clinical psychologist engaged in the treatment of patients. He found his standard Freudian psychoanalytic
training inadequate when managing his patients. He then developed a new theory in personality:
the Personal Construct Theory. Kelly
started to explain his theory by assuming that people were like scientists in
the sense that they would postulate theories, test them, and use them in their
daily lives: “We started out with two notions: (1) that, viewed in the perspective of the centuries, man might be seen as an incipient scientist, and (2) that each individual man formulates in his own way constructs through which he views the world of events. As a scientist, man seeks to predict, and thus control, the course of events. It follows, then, that the constructs which he formulates are intended to aid him in his predictive efforts”.[2] Here,
the term “construct” was introduced
and it stayed the key word for the theory. He then stated out his Fundamental Postulate: “A person's processes are
psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events.”[3]
I try to summarize the theory, in
over simplified terms, into the following components:
- Although both the external environment and thinking are in real existent, people perceive the external environment differently. They construct the external environment in their minds according to their own experience and interpretations.
- People behave in a way best to anticipate the future according to existing constructs, and to avoid conflicts with and contrast to their own constructs.
- Stress and discomfort would develop if the outcome or anticipation of outcome does not conform to the person’s construct.
- The process of construct formation and the constructs themselves are dynamic and modifiable.
So it was “construct” that mattered. While it took two to dance, it took three
to form a construct. When someone was
saying that something was white, he was actually taking another two things as
references. One was similar to the
object which he referred to as “white”, and another one as different from the
two. We could never know what exactly he
meant without knowing what the two references were. Nonsense that was an affront to our common sense
might not be an affront to the liar’s common sense. He was taking reference to something or
someone else. He did so in order to
predict and to control the event in his own manner.
Of course he might have pathology
in his construct formation. Ironically,
the treatment for defective construct system was Fixed-role therapy designed by
Kelly. In this therapy, the therapist
worked out a new role with new sets of constructs for the patient to follow. The patient would try to think and to behave
as if he were the new person as prescribed.
Thus, the personality paradox I
mentioned in the heading was several-folded. First, I could not be sure whether I was the
one having defective construct system. Those
prominent people and public figures with their supporters-whom-I-respected
might have perfect constructs that guided them towards their brilliant future. Second, they might be having pathological
construct systems and thus they might benefit from treatment. Third, they might be already undergoing
treatment with the Fixed-role Therapy, but God knows who the therapist was. Sadly, this paradox could not be elucidated as
even post-mortem could not give an answer to psychological myths.
[2] P. 12,
The Psychology of Personal Constructs Volume One (1955), George A Kelly,
Universal Digital Library
[3] P. 46,
The Psychology of Personal Constructs Volume One (1955), George A Kelly,
Universal Digital Library
(Source: HKMA News December 2012)
