Trevor Butt – författare

Kelly's pragmatic approach to psychology arose from his clinical practice and has been a strong formative influence on clinical psychology and personality theory. Taking us through the development of Kelly's work and setting it in its historical context, this is a fascinating account of one of the foremost personality theories of the 20th century.

Understanding People provides an overview and critique of current psychological assumptions about people and what differentiates them, and replaces them with a set of ideas taken from social constructionism. It begins with an examination of contemporary theories, then explores the critique of the social constructionists, before laying out the basis of an understanding of human action and behaviour, drawing on phenomenology and personal construct theory. Using everyday experience to illustrate the issues in personality theory (Is behaviour situation-specific? Why do we have a sense of self? Is there an unconscious?), this book will breathe life into an area of psychology that is so often arid, and, in the eyes of students, divorced from their world.