Harry Procter (University of Hertfordshire)
Working with Families using PCP 

This workshop will introduce participants to Personal and Relational Construct Psychology, an elaboration of Kelly’s original approach designed to do justice to the relational nature of human functioning. The bipolar construct is one of the distinguishing features of Kelly’s approach. It remains an idea of exceptional power in integrating many different psychological experiences and processes. Individuals for Kelly have construing systems but so also do cultures, organisations and families. It is vital in therapeutic and consultation to understand and work with the group or family construct system. This allows the family members and the therapist to achieve new levels of understanding of how all the members see the issues, themselves and each other. This leads to fresh dialogue and interaction enabling the family to approach their problems in fresh ways. Harry Procter has developed a variety of interviewing methods and guidelines for working in this way, including Qualitative Grids, powerful methods for mapping and intervening in the interpersonal construing occurring in clinical and organisational settings. The workshop will look at some of the most important of these and give participants the chance to try them out.

Harry Procter has developed and continues to elaborate Personal and Relational Construct Psychology which is based in PCP and more generally Systemic Constructivism. Whilst focussed on families, the approach can be applied to understanding and working with individuals, groups and organisations. He worked for thirty years as a clinical psychologist with the NHS in the West of England. He specialised in the areas of child and adult mental health, childhood learning disabilities and autism. He has published over 40 papers and chapters on the theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of his approach and he has edited two volumes of the selected papers of Milton H. Erickson for Paidos Publications, Barcelona. 

Some Reading: 

Procter, H. G. (2005) Techniques of Personal Construct Family Therapy. In Winter, D. and Viney, L. (eds.) Personal Construct Psychotherapy: Advances in Theory, Practice and Research. Whurr, London.

Procter, H. G. (2007) Construing within the Family. In Butler, R. and Green, D. The Child Within: Taking the Young Person’s Perspective by Applying Personal Construct Theory, 2ndEdition. Wiley, London. 

Procter, H. G. (2009) Reflexivity and Reflective Practice in Personal and Relational Construct Psychotherapy. In Stedmon, J. and Dallos, R. (Eds.) Reflective Practice in Psychotherapy and Counselling. Open University Press, Milton Keynes. 

Denner-Stuart, S., Procter, H.G. and Dallos, R. (2011) Fathers, sons and ADHD: A Qualitative Personal Construct Study. In Stojnov, D., Džinović, V., Pavlović, J. and Frances, M. (Eds.) Personal Construct Psychology in an Accelerating World. Serbian Constructivist Association, EPCA,Belgrade, Serbia. 

Procter, H. G. (in press) Qualitative Grids, the Relationality Corollary and the Levels of Interpersonal Construing. To appear shortly in the Journal of Constructivist Psychology. 

Website: 
A number of my articles can be downloaded from http://herts.academia.edu/HarryProcter 

 

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