Personal construct psychology: a theory to help understand professional development, a philosophy to support it.

SIR—I wish to applaud your inclusion in the last issue of Primary Dental Care of the paper by Paul Brocklehurst on personal construct psychology (PCP).1 Because most of the teeth that arrive in our surgeries come with people attached, it is highly appropriate that the human sciences, including psychology, should receive increased attention in dental literature and especially in our Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK) journal. I also wish to congratulate Paul Brocklehurst on an interesting and informative paper. Brocklehurst was kind enough to refer to the series of papers that I wrote with Russ Ladwa on mentoring and there is a lot of common ground between the thesis of his paper and that of ours. The two papers agree profoundly on the importance of lifelong learning, the value of mentor support throughout professional life, the importance of the quality of the relationship between the mentee and the mentor, and the conceptualisation of the learning and developing process as a journey. They also agree on the key role that meaning plays in many aspects of our life and especially in motivation. However, I should wish to develop the concept of meaning much further in a broader philosophical sense than Brocklehurst has done, in order to develop a strong moral foundation for ethical practice— but that is another subject. The papers also agree profoundly on the importance in the mentee–mentor relationship of the mentor playing a facilitative—as distinct from a directive—role. Indeed, I would argue that this is a model for us all to seek to follow as we relate in many environments—including, for example, groups in committee where the facilitative chairperson seeks to draw out the contributions and ideas from each member— just as good mentors will do with their mentee (or their patient)—rather than direct the group towards a pre-determined desirable ‘decision’. This brings me to the point where I wish to clarify some subtle—but key—variations in approach between PCP used as a tool in the mentoring relationship as Brocklehurst seems to suggest, as distinct from using PCP as a means of seeking to understand what is going on in the mentee’s mind. Here, I need briefly to contrast the approaches of Kelly (and PCP) and Rogers (and the person-centred approach— PCA). Rogers (1951/2003), over a professional life spanning 60 years, went much further than Kelly in developing a theory of personality and behaviour which he articulated in his 1951 book2 Client-Centred Therapy (pp 481-533). (The last step in the evolution from patientto clientto person-centred terms was completed some years later.) Rogers further developed his approach in other fields including education, business, family and other forms of group work. The first foundation block of the PCA emerged from Rogers’ recognition over many years of dealing with clients that every person has a tendency to actualise themselves in the direction of becoming the most complete person that they have the potential to be, which has been summed up by Bozarth (1998):3 ...that the actualising tendency is the foundation block of the person-centred approach and is the primary motivational force. p 144 The second foundation block arose from Rogers’ (1995) realisation that every person that he worked with had the resources within themselves to find his or her own way forward.4 Individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-understanding and for altering their self-concepts, basic attitudes, and self-directed behaviours; these resources can be tapped if a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided. (p 115) This leads on to the third foundation block relating to the mentor; again, succinctly summarised by Bozarth (1998): ...the individual (client) is always his/her own best expert and authority on his/her life...the role of the [mentor] is only that of implementing certain attitudinal qualities.... That is, the intent of the [mentor] is to be whom [sic] he/she is while embodying the attitudinal qualities in order to promote the client’s self-actualising process. p 144 This discovery led Rogers to formulate a list of ‘six necessary and sufficient conditions’ for therapeutic change or growth, often abbreviated to ‘three core conditions’, as Rogers expressed them himself (in Cooper et al 2007).5 There are three conditions which are essential: that the therapist is himself a real person, a congruent person; that the therapist cares for the client, prizes the client; and that the therapist exhibits a real empathy for what is going on in the client. p 2 The significance of this is that, in the mentoring relationship, the mentee (not the mentor) is the expert. The mentor’s role is to seek—through attentive listening, thoughtful questioning, and the use of idea-generating processes such as reflecting and brainstorming—to help mentees to discover their own way forward. In the second6 of the recently published series of papers on mentoring, Russ Ladwa and I described two approaches to mentoring: the more traditional ‘trusted adviser and friend’ model and the PCA model (pp 20-21). In the PCA model (learned on the Faculty mentoring course), it is inappropriate for the mentor to offer advice or interpretations, as would happen in personal construct therapy. That is a different approach, which could certainly fit into the traditional model. Although both models are in use, the evidence is that the PCA, by harnessing the mentee’s own resources, is more powerful. This is not to say that there is no place for the use of the PCP approach. However, in the context of PCA mentoring, the mentor who starts to use PCP has changed hats and is now assuming the role of expert in the relationship to an extent that conflicts with the PCA. It is important that PCA mentors are quite clear about this as the client focus is the source of the power in the person-centred spproach. In PCA mentoring, therefore, I believe that the greatest value of PCP is in helping individuals to seek to understand the mentee’s inner processes, as Brocklehurst suggests at the beginning of his paper. Finally, I wish to pick up on the word ‘philosophy’ used in Brocklehurst’s title. I am not sure that Kelly used the word ‘philosophy’ of his work and I certainly do not recall Rogers doing so either, although both approaches have a worthy philosophical dimension to them in the way that they place central value on the person. I believe we could all, with much profit, reflect more deeply on our ‘philosophy of practice’. What seems to have emerged in the person-centred field is a reference to our way of being with the client. Whatever the choice of words, Paul Brocklehurst and I are at one in wishing to place our client—the person at the heart of the mentoring relationship—at the focus of our work with them. VERNON HOLT.