Citation - Britton, J. (1970). Language and experience. In M. Nystrand (Ed.), Language as a way of knowing (pp. 38-45). Toronto: The Ontario institute for studiees in education.

the power of language to create map or representation of world and self / 語言創造地圖或世界與自我表徵的力量

tags: George Kelly, persoanl construction, world representation

• George A. Kelly - 個人建構心理學 - The Psychology of Personal Constructs (1955)

Kelly 認為在日常生活中，每個人處理問題的方法與科學方法是非常類似的。Britton在文章中引用Kelly 的經驗：

One of my task in the 1930s was to direct graduate studies leading to the Master's Degree. A typical afternoon might find me talking to a graduate student, doing all those familiar things that thesis directors have to do – encouraging the student to pinpoint the issues, to observe, to become intimate with the problem, to form hypotheses either inductively or deductively, to make some preliminary test runs, to relate his data to his predictions, to control his experiments so that he will know what led to what, to generalize cautiously and to revise his thinking in the light of expericence.
At two o'clock I might have an appointment with a client. During this interview I would not be taking the role of scientist byt rather helping the distressed person work out some solutions to his life's problems. So what would I do? Why, I would try to get hime to pinpoint the issues, to observe, to become intimate with the problem, to form hypotheses, to make test rums, to relate outcomes to anticipations, to control his ventures so that he will know what led to what, to generalize cautiously and to revise his dogma in the light of expericence. (Kelly, 1969, pp. 60-61)

Kelly 認為人類普遍用來處理問題的行為，就如同科學家的探究方法，先形成假設，或預測事物，然後檢驗事物是否真如預期般發生，然後再修改其假設。這種假設或是理解的架構，雖然可能不完善，但是卻是理解世界的基礎。因此人類必須先擁有一個架構；不論這個架構是多麼的薄弱或是貧乏。隨著經驗，人會在日常生活中檢驗、修正原先建立的架構，提出新的架構，進一步預測未來的事件與問題。如此展開個人架構的建構活動。

Man looks at his world through transparent patterns or templates which he creates and then attempts to fit over the realities of which the world is composed. The fit is not always very good. Yet without such patterns the world appears to be such an undifferentiated homogeneity that man is unable to make any sense out of it. Even a poor fit is more helpful to hime than nothing at all. (Kelly, 1963, pp. 8-9) / 人類透過易懂的架構或自創的模式來檢視這個世界，並且嘗試著讓這種檢視能符合構成整個世界的現實。雖然有時並不總是能事事符合預期。但是如果缺乏這種架構，整個世界將會看起來毫無差別，也就沒有任何的意義。因此，即便這個架構是一個差勁的架構，總勝過什麼都沒有。

Kelly 的理論：
世界表徵 - world representation
個人建構系統 - person's construction system