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An evaluation of changes in personal constructs following a structured programme of intervention with families with parenting difficulties

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PatonK_1997redux.pdf (19.41Mb)
Date
1997
Author
Paton, Kate
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Abstract
 
 
The present study will focus on George Kelly's Personal Construct Theory (1955), as an explanation of how parents acquire their ideas, theories or constructs about how to parent their children.
 
The following literature review will introduce Kelly's theory of personal constructs and provide an overview of the development of personal construct systems. This information will then be linked to how parent's own experience of being parented leads to the development of their construct systems concerning parenting and how these constructs affect their relationships with their children. The importance of the attachment process is discussed with reference to the parent's experience of being parented and how this subsequently affects their ability to form a secure bond with their child and to parent effectively. The nature of parenting difficulties experienced by some parents is then discussed with reference to the factors that contribute to a breakdown in parenting. Studies reviewing the efficacy of interventions for enhancing the parent-child relationship suggest that behavioural training in varying formats lead to an improvement in child behaviour. The main aims of the current study were to investigate whether changes in parent's personal construing can be affected by parent's undertaking an intervention group. The aims of the intervention group were to develop the parent-child relationship, to encourage the participants to share parenting skills and also to provide a psychotherapeutic environment for parents to discuss their own childhood experiences of being parented. Kelly suggests that three conditions exist that are favourable to the formation of new constructs, these are, an atmosphere of experimentation, the provision of new elements, (for example mixing with new people) and finally the validation of new constructs by someone in the therapeutic role. By providing these conditions in the form of an intervention group it was hypothesised that parents undertaking the group would have the necessary atmosphere to effect change in their personal construct system and as a consequence of this their relationships with their children and the quality of their parenting would improve.
 
The final part of the literature review gives an overview of studies that have looked at the measurement of change in personal constructs following psychotherapeutic intervention.
 
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http://hdl.handle.net/1842/29935
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