ABSTRACT
Therapy was viewed by Kelly (1955) as ‘a psychological process which changes one's outlook on some aspect of life’ (p. 186), or in other words ‘the psychological reconstruction of life’ (p. 187, italics in original). Although he described its goal as ‘to alleviate complaints - complaints of a person about himself and others and complaints of others about him’ (Kelly, 1955, p. 831, italics in original), he clearly did not see personal construct psychotherapy as purely having the practical aim of symptom-reduction. Indeed, his view was that ‘psychotherapy should make one feel that he has come alive’ (Kelly, 1980, p. 29). As Epting (1984) notes, this coming alive is a manifestation of the client beginning actively to elaborate his or her personal construct system. For him, the aims of personal construct psychotherapy are ‘to help the person pour his or her creative abilities into the real world’ and ‘to become his or her own therapist’ (p. 8).
