Over the years I have had several positive reactions to the
artice I wrote twenty years ago on the 'ABC model' (Loaded and
Honest Questions: A Construct Theory View of Symptoms and
Therapy. In Don Bannister (Ed.), New Perspectives in Personal
Construct Theory. Academic Press: London, 1977) I have just
written one further article on the model (Finn Tschudi and
Sigrid Sandsberg: On the advantages of symptoms: Exploring the
client's construing. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 1984,
25, 169-177).
I now want to take stock, and write a new article about the
promise and limitations of the model, also how it may be
extended, perhaps it even may broaden into (part of) a
philosophy of life.
I will thus be most interested in all references to work which
has applied or commented upon the model. If possible I would
appreciate getting a reprint. Furthermore I would welcome off-
hand comments on the model, preferably based on clinical
experience.
Everyone who answers will get drafts of the article (probably
not before next spring since right now I'm busy perfecting
FLEXIGRID for use with Hermans' Self-Confrontation Method, and
polishing MULTIGRID).
While the ABC project seems a worthwhile project on its own, I
would like to add some words about a special reason that I'm
undertaking this project now. I'm currently working with
Johan Galtung on an annotated set of articles tentatively
labelled 'Conflict transformation and psychology'. Johan has
for the past forty years or so been extensively involved with
peace work/research, and in Gandhi's spirit to promote
nonviolent approaches to dealing with conflicts. You might
find his recent book 'Peace by peaceful means', Sage 1996 of
interest.
I'd like to write further about this to fellow
constructivists/Kellians at another occasion. At present I
just want to emphasize that I will be especially interested in
any thoughts about extending the ABC model to the
interpersonal realm. A perhaps feeble attempt in this
direction can be found in our 1984 article above, I'll send
this article to those who might be interested .
This note is sent to the European, North-American and
Australian newsletter and to the PCP newsgroup. I would
appreciate if you would inform others who might be interested
in this project whom I will not reach through these channels.
Finn Tschudi
e-mail: Finn.Tschudi@psykologi.uio.no fax +47-22854419
Address: Institute of Psychology
Box 1094 University of Oslo
N-0317 Oslo, Norway
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