An Alternative Construction of Agoraphobia

George Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory views people as scientists who are constantly formulating hypotheses about their world and testing out, and if necessary revising, the predictions thus derived. These predictions have their basis in the system of hierarchically interrelated, bipolar, personal constructs which each individual develops in order to discriminate between, and to anticipate, events. A person may, for example, discriminate between others largely in terms of those who give him support and those who do not. This construct may be related to another construct in his system, distinguishing between people who never get angry and those who do, such that supportive people are viewed as likely never to get angry. If he then encounters a number of angry, supportive people or people who are neither angry nor supportive, this prediction will be invalidated and reconstruing will be called for. The individual’s response may be to loosen the linkage between the two constructs, supportiveness no longer being seen as carrying any implications for the degree to which a person expresses anger; the relationship between them may be reversed, supportiveness now implying the likelihood of anger rather than its absence; or a new construct (e.g. ‘passionately involved-uninvolved’) may be developed which encompasses the possibility of being both supportive and angry.