"The ""resistance"" in the psychology of personal constructs "

Abstract

In the first part of this paper the main general principles of Personal Construct Psychology are outlined. We highlight the view of humans as continuously construing meanings by checking them out through experience, and reconstructing them. This process of construing events, in which reality does not dictate to us its meaning, is organized according with the subject’s sense of identity. This sense, although open to different courses of development, is not easily amenable to change. PCP vies resistance as a construction of the therapist when the client activates self-protecting mechanisms for his or her core structures, which prevent change to occur. It is suggested that this very same process allows for a better understanding of the subject’s sense of identity which may enable the development of other ways of changing compatible with such a sense of identity.