International Handbook of Personal Construct Psychology

Fay Fransella is Founder and Director of the Center for Personal Construct Psychology, Emeritus Reader in Clinical Psychology, University of London and Visiting Professor of Personal Construct Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. She has written 11 books, eight of them specifically relating to personal construct psychology and the use of repertory grids, and she has published over 150 journal papers and book chapters. She wrote the first edition of A Manual for Repertory Grid Technique with Don Bannister for Academic Press in 1977.She trained and worked as an occupational therapist for 10 years before taking a degree in psychology and a postgraduate diploma in clinical psychology in 1962. It was during her first job as a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, that she was introduced to George Kelly's personal construct psychology and his repertory grid method. Both were revolutionary alternatives to the dominant behaviorism of the time. She found the view thatwe are all free agents responsible for what we make of the events which continually confront us particularly liberating. Since that time she has conducted research, together with teaching and writing, within the framework of Kelly's ideas. Her main area of research has been stuttering, for which she used a form of repertory grid. She has also conducted research on weight disorders and various psychological problems.