• ARTICLES

A prelude to an inquiry into the interplay of personal and social meanings: Freud, Kelly & Bauman

Miletić, V.

Keywords:
Meaning-making, sociality, commonality, personal construct theory

Abstract:
George Kelly introduced the notion of public construction systems in volume 1 of his Psychology of Personal Constructs, but he did not elaborate extensively on the subject because his focus was on psychotherapy and possibilities of reconstruction of personal meanings. Since Kelly, theory has largely shifted its emphasis to the study of social production of meaning. Even though they share epistemological common ground, personal construct theory and social constructionist theories provide incommensurable descriptions of human meaning-making processes. To extend Kelly’s theory’s range of convenience there is a need to bridge the theoretical gap between the personal and social meaning-making processes. In this article I will outline possible ways of doing this by providing bridges between Kelly and other important thinkers such as Freud and Zygmunt Bauman, and by outlining a possible way of looking at the relationship between personal and social meanings based on personal construct theory.