"A genuine new departure and a spirited contribution to the psychology of personality." ―Jerome S. Bruner This original theory of personality is based on the concept that there are many workable ways by which individuals can construct their world. George Kelly's starting point and basic premise is that people's processes are psychologically channeled by the ways they anticipate events rather than by the ways they react to them. We develop new means of overcoming obstacles; we are, therefore, neither prisoners of our environment nor victims of our past. In Dr. Kelly's groundbreaking theory, the patterns of our make-up, which he calls constructs, are the key to changing old patters. Each person anticipates events differently, and Dr. Kelly shows how we can begin to understand each person's unique constructs. In this way, a person is enabled to create alternative constructions―finding a sense of meaning in life, regaining control over his or her environment, and establishing new roads to mental health. This volume consists of the first three chapters of Kelly's two-volume work The Psychology of Personal Constructs . This extraordinary and original work succeeds in raising to a proper stature and dignity the need man feels toward extending his cognitive control over environment, and what is more important, Dr. Kelly makes room for the unique individual and his alternative routes to mental health, long one of the chief dilemmas confronting science. George A. Kelly was professor of psychology at Ohio State University and served as president of the Clinical and Consulting Divisions of the American Psychological Association.