Bill Warren KELLY’S PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY AND DEWEY’S PRAGMATISM: SOME DIRECT AND SOME ‘INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT’ ASPECTS Bill Warren University of Newcastle, Australia This paper is intended as a companion paper to two others focused on the links between Pragmatism and George Kelly’s theory of personal constructs: Butt’s (2005) discussion of George Herbert Mead (1863-1931), and McWilliams’ (2009) account of the ideas of William James (1842-1910). Given that much of what has been said about Pragmatism and PCP in these last papers, and also in Warren (1998, 2003) applies almost equally to Dewey, the present paper attempts to present a different perspective and to highlight lesser known matters that are hopefully not only interesting in their own right but also raise similarities and points of contrast between the intellectual careers of Dewey and Kelly. Thus is here presented a discussion of some aspects of the ideas and career of a thinker long identified with North American Pragmatism, in the light of Kelly’s (1955/1991) comment that Dewey’s “philosophy and psychology can be read between many of the lines of the psychology of personal constructs” (p. 154/108). The discussion is necessarily selective, and in the context of a focus on the historical and theoretical origins of PCP. Its aim is to provide a fuller sketch of the wider climate of ideas to which both Dewey and Kelly were subjected as their scholarly work and their careers developed. Key words: personal construct psychology, pragmatism, Kelly, Dewey CONTEXT: DEWEY AND KELLY IN cluded: The Reflex Arc in Psychology (1896), TIME The Significance of the Problem of Knowledge (1897), The School and Society (1900), The In- Scholarly works fluence of Charles Darwin on Philosophy (1910), Democracy and Education (1916/1966), John Dewey (1859-1952) was appointed to a Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), and Hu- Chair of Philosophy, Psychology and Pedagogy man Nature and Conduct (1922). During Kelly’s in 1904, insisting that the name of the Chair be early adulthood Dewey published significant as it was because of his conviction that the three further work: How We Think (1910 originally, disciplines it describes were inherently con- revised 1933), The Quest for Certainty (1929 ), A nected. He published a good deal of his major Common Faith (1934), and Experience and Edu- work before George Kelly (1905-1967) was an cation (1938). In a number of cases there were adult. Kelly was appointed to a Chair of Psy- republications of the earlier works and revised chology in 1945, later to a Chair of Clinical Psy- editions in the period in which Kelly’s own ideas chology (1946), both at Ohio State University, were taking shape. As will be developed below, and then to a Chair of Theoretical Psychology at Dewey and Kelly also shared a more general Brandeis University in 1965. Kelly’s major work social-intellectual milieu, one in which Dewey was published in 1955, though with a gestation was a very significant and controversial figure. period between 1930 and that publication date. This significance and controversy turn around Dewey’s significant work in the period of two matters: Progressive Education, and De- Kelly’s childhood, infancy, and adolescence in- wey’s social activism. 32 Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010 Kelly’s personal construct psychology and Dewey’s pragmatism Progressive education ing as a coalition against ignorance and the threat of social divisiveness and fragmentation. Kelly’s early years studying and working in the Progressive Education is captured well as to field of educational psychology corresponds to its essential features by Kneller (1964/1971): what is identified as the ‘progressive era’ (1917- education should be centered on the learner’s 1957), spawned by what Cremin (1961) calls the needs and interests , involve the learner coope- ‘progressive impulse’ (1876-1917). The ‘im- rating rather than competing with others, and pulse’ was constituted by a zeitgeist in which the actively involved in the process, in respect of ideas of Rousseau, Marx, Darwin (particularly which process the problem-solving project was Social Darwinism), Herbert Spencer, and Freud the ‘gold standard’ example, in a context where were resonating in Europe and had reached a teacher was a mentor or guide not an imparter North America. Thus, too, was the psychologist of knowledge, that context (e.g. a school) being William James (1899/1907) writing to teachers run democratically with learners having an equal as the centrality and magnitude of the activity voice with their guides or mentors. In Dewey’s that is education was being recognized as having version of these features, there are no such a vital function of ensuring social-cohesion. De- things as ‘subjects’, as the world comes at us not wey’s (1900) The School and Society recognized as bits or lumps that are Geography or Mathe- this as did his later Democracy and Education matics etc., but as a ‘blooming buzzing confu- (1916/1966) and there were numerous other sion’ out of which we make a sense; though the voices that were formed into a full voiced choir sense we make is not completely arbitrary. All of of opinion, argument and experimentation that these ideas sit very well with personal construct challenged North American education at its core. psychology. The formative role in relation to this choir was Cremin’s wider argument is that the Progres- played by Joseph Mayer Rice, and the main sive Education Movement represents “a crucial choirmaster was John Dewey. Rice, a pediatri- chapter in the history of recent American civili- cian who had become disturbed by the children zation” and that “to ignore it is to miss one he saw whose problems arose from the social whole facet of America’s response to industrial- conditions in which they lived, wrote an analysis ism” (p. ix-x). Thus, by the time Kelly was en- of the parlous state of North American schooling gaged in the general milieu of education – teach- and education. As Cremin (1961) tells us, Rice’s ing, research, dealing with ‘difficult students’ – articles in The Forum (between 1892 and June, progressive ideas were ‘in the air’, and Dewey if 1893) were to constitute the catalyst for a revolu- not the mentor of the Progressive Movement, tion in thinking. Generally, he argues, progres- certainly a very significant influence within it. sive education originated in the wider “humani- Indeed, an emphasis on the social dimensions of tarian effort to apply the promise of American education, particularly a view that society could life – the ideal of government by, of, and for the be ‘restructured’ using the schools, was contro- people” to the urban-industrial civilization that versial; it particularly annoyed those who had emerged at the end of the nineteenth century just fought a war, and would fight another, to (Cremin, 1961, p. viii). For him, “progressive preserve the existing lifestyle. Dewey did not education began as Progressivism in education: a accept the ideas of the Social Reconstructionist many-sided effort to use the schools to improve School of the Movement which had raised the the lives of individuals” (Cremin, 1961, p. viii). question “dare the schools build a new social The crucial points here are a stress on the social order?” This lack of support for ‘harder Left’ dimensions of life (influenced by the ideas of ideas was despite Dewey’s social activism and Marx and Social Darwinism, then Mead in par- his involvements in many social and political ticular), on the idea of a ‘social science’ (the new causes, such as women’s suffrage, the unioniza- sciences of Sociology and Psychology), and on tion of teachers, his involvement in organiza- ‘the practical’ (American Pragmatism), combin- tions encouraging social and cultural relations with Russia and Latin America, as well as his 33 Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 7, 2010 Bill Warren championing of academic freedom. He had also, from?’ might answer ‘from a shop’ was but a at some personal risk and aged in his late seven- relatively trivial example of the distancing of ties, gone to Mexico to Chair the Committee es- people from the origins of things in real, practic- tablished in 1937 to review the Moscow trial of al activity of human beings in their efforts to Leon Trotsky, which concluded that, in essence, live, and to survive at a higher than mere subsis- Trotsky had been ‘framed’. tence level. Again, Kelly’s three early (‘jug- These last interests and involvements, in ad- gled’) jobs -- with bankers, in an Ameri- dition to his general social-critical commentary, canization class for would-be citizens, and in account for the creation of an FBI file on Dewey language classes for labor organizers – could (Beineke, 1987). This file shows three periods of hardly not have provided first-hand experience active interest: 1930, during WWII, and after his of these tensions that the progressive educator in death in 1957. The first two periods reveal con- general, and Dewey in particular, were highlight- cerns about his friendly relations with Russia ing and of which they were warning. Kelly’s and his visit there in 1928, and his membership MA in 1927 ( One Thousand Workers and Their of organizations with the foci indicated above. Leisure ) attests to his interest in social issues, Material from the third period was only partly just as do his PhD (Common Factors in Reading released and shows simply that the then FBI Di- and Speech Difficulties ) and his earlier Bachelor rector, J. Edgar Hoover, requested a review of of Education Degree, evidence his interest in the file, but the reason for that review and what research and thinking in the field of education he did with that summary is not known.