Personal Construct Group Work with Troubled Adolescents

Childhood Mourning and Lament - Ways of Treatment

“…In young children of preschool and school age the most important technique is the therapeutic relationship that develops between the teacher who acts as a counselor and the child. At the same time playful activities, fairy tales and the use of metaphorical speech are techniques that can help the child accept his feelings after a loss (Truneckova, Viney 2006).…”

Evaluating Personal Construct Group Work with Troubled Adolescents

“…In schools, personal construct group work has been developed to reduce adolescent risk-taking (Viney, Truneckova, Weekes, & Oades, 1997) and, in the current research, to foster behavioral change in troubled adolescents (Truneckova & Viney, 2001, 2006). An account of the structure and processes of this personal construct group work with troubled adolescents has also been published recently (Truneckova & Viney, 2005, 2006.…”

“…Instrumental have been the results from research on adolescent behavior (Brown, Clasen, & Eicher, 1986;Buhrmester, 1990;Rosenberg, 1985), social development (Damon, 1983;Damon & Hart, 1982;Selman, 1980), and the personal construct research on the structural changes of adolescents' construing (Adams-Webber, 1977, 1978Adams-Webber & Benjafield, 1976;Bannister & Agnew, 1976;Jackson & Bannister, 1985) and of adolescents' definitions of self (Adams-Webber, 1979;Adams-Webber & Neff, 1996;Bannister & Fransella, 1986;Barratt, 1977;Duck, 1975;Klion & Leitner, 1985;Little, 1968). We predicted that personal construct group work, an approach designed to offer these adolescents a forum for relationship experimentation, for testing new and different constructions of self, and a forum to facilitate the attempts of these adolescents to understand their own meaning-making and that of others (Jackson, 1992a;Truneckova & Viney, 2001, 2006Viney et al, 1997Viney et al, , 1999, would lead to less disruptive behaviors by the troubled adolescents at school and at home.…”

Constructivist and Humanistic Therapies

“…Improvement in speech has been demonstrated in stutterers treated by personal construct psychotherapy (Fransella, 1972), who have been found to show a lower relapse rate than those solely treated by speech techniques (Evesham & Fransella, 1985). Changes in construing have been demonstrated during personal construct group psychotherapy for clients with eating disorders (Button, 1987) and for problem drinkers (Landfield, 1979), and this form of therapy has also been found to be effective with disturbed adolescents (Jackson, 1992;Sewell & Ovaert, 1997;Truneckova & Viney, 2005;Viney, Henry & Campbell, 1995), survivors of childhood sexual abuse (Alexander et al, 1989) and people with problems involving poor anger control (Horley & Francouer, 2003;Pekkala & Dave, 2006). Older people have been found to benefit from a personal construct approach (Viney, 1986;Viney, Benjamin & Preston, 1989;Botella & Feixas, 1992-3), as have medical in-patients (Viney et al, 1985a(Viney et al, , 1985b(Viney et al, , 1985c(Viney et al, , 1985d, people with chronic pain , breast cancer survivors (Lane & Viney, 2001), and AIDS caregivers (Viney, Walker & Crooks, 1995) and women attending menopause workshops (Foster and Viney, 2005).…”