Introduction
In this essay, a research took place to better support the requested comment, also given in this essay, on both colleagues’ statements about the subject: The Corollaries of Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory. One’s personality can be characterized by Kelly’s Corollaries and these traits correlate with each other, giving a person their own individual point of view of the world; also, as time goes by, they permit one to adapt, having the most comfortable and secure stand on any life situation.
Regarding The Corollaries of Kelly's Personal Construct Theory, it was very well said that my personality is molded by my own stand before a situation and what makes me feel, my choice of how to express it and, when presented with new experiences, the need for change of my ideas or even that same stand I took before. These traits also correlate with one another, "when we choose the alternative for each construct that works best for us" (Schultz & Schultz, 2009).
Furthermore, a person always seeks the acquaintance with a context of low risk and less anxiety, searching for a sense of security. Despite this basis, like in the first example Colleague 1 presented, it may lead to contrastive feelings, like suffering and sadness, which I could interpret (in my vision and individuality) as inadequate when thinking of low anxiety and safety, but that, for this girl’s situation, might have actually been the more predictable situation, with less risk associated, in which she would feel secure to express herself, because “() in the defensive form, a person chooses so as to avoid the anxiety ().” (Hinkle, 1965)
Colleague 2, who has chosen the same corollaries to work on, has chosen three very personal experiences in her life to show as examples for individuality, experience and choice. Analyzing a previous idea that "people perceive and organize their world of experiences the same way scientists do, by formulating hypotheses about the environment and testing them against the reality of daily life" (Schultz & Schultz, 2009), we often experiment different possible choices in life, to find out which one would produce a better result; and, indeed, they result in modifications in our own personality throughout time.
Given this, I would find rather interesting to know how exactly these situations and choices she made and talked about in her post are related to another corollary, the Fragmentation Corollary, in which “A person may successively employ a variety of construct subsystems which are inferentially incompatible” (Hinkle, 2009), for her? Has she encountered such discrepancies in her self-construction during these events? And how did she manage them to work as one?
Conclusion
Analyzing both my colleagues posts and based on Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory, one can conclude that the personality of each individual can be characterized by a series of postulates that explain the way that it is constructed by us all the way through our lives, giving us individuality, but making us fit in the bigger picture of today’s world.
We are, thus responsible for choosing, analyzing and construct the better versions of such personality and also the ways it expresses itself in life situations, so that we reach the primary objective of fitting in and go through them with a sense of security, low risk and adequacy to our emotions about them.
References
Hinkle, Dennis Neil (1965). The Change of Personal Constructs From the Viewpoint of a Theory of Construct Implication. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp10/hinkle1965.pdf
Schultz, D.P. & S.E. Schultz. (2009). Theories of Personality: Ninth Edition. Wadsworth Publishing. Belmont, CA. [pp. 351& 353]
