What does Kelly mean when he refers to “creativity”? Give an example of creative thinking from...

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Psychology

What does Kelly mean when he refers to “creativity”? Give anexample of creative thinking from your own experience, usingKelly’s cycle to structure your discussion. Contrast Kelly’sdefinitions of anxiety and aggression with those notions as theywere developed by Freud and later by Dollard and Miller. Whichtheorist’s approach to psychotherapy is most similar to Kelly’s?Explain your answer by comparing both the goals and methods oftherapy.

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George Kellys theory explains a lot about creative thinking and one best example is we ourselves seeking to design lets say a home for us or teaching a kindergaten child The more tha cognitive function and creative the mind new ideas eventually come to us George Kelly was teaching physiological psychology at Fort Hays Kansas State College in 1931 It was the time of the dust bowl and the Depression Recognizing the pains and sorrows of the farming families of this part of westcentral Kansas he decided to do something a little more humanitarian with his life He decided to develop a rural clinical service Mind you this was hardly a moneymaking operation Many of his clients had no money Some couldnt come to him and so he and his students would travel sometimes for hours to them At first Kelly used the standard Freudian training that every psychology PhD received in those days He had these folks lie down on a couch free associate and tell him their dreams When he saw resistances or symbols of sexual and aggressive needs he would patiently convey his impressions to them It was surprising he thought how readily these relatively unsophisticated people took to these explanations of their problems Surely given their culture the standard Freudian interpretations should seem terribly bizarre Apparently they placed their faith in him the professional Kelly himself however wasnt so sure about these standard Freudian explanations He found them a bit farfetched at times not quite appropriate to the lives of Kansan farm families So as time went by he noticed that his interpretations of dreams and such were becoming increasingly unorthodox In fact he began making up explanations His clients listened as carefully as before believed in him as much as ever and improved at the same slow but steady pace It began to occur to him that what truly mattered to these people was that they had an explanation of their difficulties that they had a way of understanding them What mattered was that the chaos of their lives developed some order And he discovered that while just about any order and understanding that came from an authority was accepted gladly order and understanding that came out of their own lives their own culture was even better Out of these insights Kelly developed his theory and philosophy The theory well get to in a while The philosophy he called constructive alternativism Constructive alternativism is the idea that while there is only one true reality reality is always experienced from one or another perspective or alternative construction I have a construction you have one a person on the other side of the planet has one someone living long ago had one a primitive person has one a modern scientist has one every child has one even someone who is seriously mentally ill has one Some constructions are better than others Mine I hope is better than that of someone who is seriously mentally ill My physicians construction of my ills is better I trust than the construction of the local faith healer Yet noones construction is ever complete the world is just too complicated too big for anyone to have the perfect perspective And noones perspective is ever to be completely ignored Each perspective is in fact a perspective on the ultimate reality and has some value to that person in that time and place In fact Kelly says there are an infinite number of alternative constructions one may take towards the world and if ours is not doing a very good job we can take another Kellys theory begins with what he called his fruitful metaphor He had noticed long before that scientists and therapists often displayed a peculiar attitude towards people While they thought quite well of themselves they tended to look down on their subjects or clients While they saw themselves as engaged in the fine arts of reason and empiricism they tended to see ordinary people as the victims of their sexual energies or conditioning histories But Kelly with his experience with Kansan students and farm people noted that these ordinary people too were engaged in science they too were trying to understand what was going on So people ordinary people are scientists too The have constructions of their reality like scientists have theories They have anticipations or expectations like scientists have hypotheses They engage in behaviors that test those expectations like scientists do experiments They improve their understandings of reality on the bases of their experiences like scientists adjust their theories to fit the facts From this metaphor comes Kellys entire theory Kelly organized his theory into a fundamental postulate and 11 corollaries His fundamental postulate says this A persons processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events This and all subsequent quotations are from Kellys 1955 The Psychology of Personal Constructs This is the central movement in the scientific process from hypothesis to experiment or observation ie from anticipation to experience and behavior By processes Kelly means your experiences thoughts feelings behaviors and whatever might be left over All these things are determined not just by the reality out there but by your efforts to anticipate the world other people and yourself from moment to moment as well as daytoday and yeartoyear So when I look out of my window to find the source of some highpitched noises I dont just see exactly and completely what is out there I see that which is in keeping with my expectations I am ready for birds perhaps or children laughing and playing I am not prepared for a bulldozer that operates with a squeal rather than the usual rumbling or for a flying saucer landing in my yard If a UFO were in fact the source of the highpitched noises I would not truly perceive it at first Id perceive something Id be confused and frightened Id try to figure out what Im looking at Id engage in all sorts of behaviors to help me figure it out or to get me away from the source of my anxiety Only after a bit would I be able to find the right anticipation the right hypothesis Oh my God its a UFO If of course UFOs were a common place occurrence in my world upon hearing highpitched noises I would anticipate birds kids or a UFO an anticipation that could then be quickly refined with a glance out of the window The construction corollary A person anticipates events by construing their replications That is we construct our anticipations using our past experience We are fundamentally conservative creatures we expect things to happen as theyve happened before We look for the patterns the consistencies in our experiences If I set my alarm clock I expect it to ring at the right time as it has done since time immemorial If I behave nicely to someone I expect them to behave nicely back This is the step from theory to hypothesis ie from construction system knowledge understanding to anticipation The experience corollary A persons construction system varies as he successively construes the replication of events When things dont happen the way they have in the past we have to adapt to reconstruct This new experience alters our future anticipations We learn This is the step from experiment and observation to validation or reconstruction Based on the results of our experiment the behaviors we engage in or our observation the experiences we have we either continue our faith in our theory of reality or we change the theory The dichotomy corollary A persons construction system is composed of a finite number of dichotomous constructs We store our experience in the form of constructs which he also referred to as useful concepts convenient fictions and transparent templates You place these templates on the world and they guide your perceptions and behaviors He often calls them personal constructs emphasizing the fact that they are yours and yours alone unique to you and noone else A construct is not some label or pigeonhole or dimension I as a psychologist lay on you the ordinary person It is a small bit of how you see the world He also calls them bipolar constructs to    See Answer
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