ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the working of the psychology of personal constructs in the realm of interpersonal relations. There is a simple approach which has proved useful in arriving at a clinical understanding of clients. It is the request that they write a character sketch of themselves. The term ‘character sketch’ seems to permit the client more latitude in using his own construction system for describing himself than do such phrases as ‘self-description’, ‘self-analysis’, and the like. Valuable as area analysis and thematic analysis are to the clinical understanding of self-characterization protocol, the dimensional analysis is, from the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs, even more meaningful. After the clinician has identified the constructs the client appears to be using in his self-characterization, he turns his attention to his own professional system of constructs and makes a definite attempt to subsume the client’s personal constructs under that system.
