This episode focuses on construing in dementia and the challenges that presents to the carer, particularly if they are caring for a parent. I refer to a paper by Mike Bender and Sally Robbins who write about the impact of dementia on construing and on the construing system. The implications of changes in the construing of the person and their child are significant.
If you work with people who would be described as having difficulties with anger, there is a new lost cost book out from Peter Cummins and Diane Allen at the Coventry Constructivist Centre: A Beginner's Guide to Interpreting Anger using Personal Construct Psychology. It is available only on Amazon because that keeps our costs to a minimum level and we don't need to make the book more expensive. You can use this link or do a search on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/ilpCNc0.

References

Bender, M. and Robbins, S. (2006). Making sense of dementia Ch. 10 in Caputi, P, (Ed.) Personal Construct Psychology: New Ideas.

Mitchell, W. (2009) Somebody I Used to Know.

This episode is about the PCP way of doing a useful therapy session in a one-off session. The evidence for using a single session, or One-at-a-time therapy is that a single session can be helpful. Tom Ravenette has a useful paper on this which I use in this episode but you can also take a look at Windy Dryden’s model.

References:

Personal construct Psychology and the assessment of young people: the ‘one-off’ interview. Ch. 13 in Ravenette, T. (1999). Personal Construct Theory in Educational Psychology. A Practitioner’s View.

Windy Dryden Single Session Therapy on You Tube:

https://youtu.be/wIcuOVOABRw?feature=shared

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT_XmacU83U

The inspiration for this episode came from a BBC Radio 4 programme, The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O'Sullivan. The programme is an abridged version of her book. This episode looks at Kelly's definition of disorder, something quite different from current diagnostic manuals. His version is more likely to help us to understand and help the person because it is focussed on their construing and this is something that could change. Kelly said, "Perhaps the proper question is not what is a disorder but where, and the therapist question is not who needs treatment but what needs treatment" (Kelly 1991).

Reference:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00291y8