This is a summary of Personal Construct Psychology, Radical Constructivism, and Social Constructionism: A Dialogue
Authors: Jay S. Efran (Temple University), Sheila McNamee (University of New Hampshire), Bill Warren (University of Newcastle, Australia), Jonathan D. Raskin (SUNY New Paltz), moderator
Published in: Journal of Constructivist Psychology
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This article is a transcript of a panel discussion from the 2011 International Congress on Personal Construct Psychology in Boston. Three scholars each represent a different branch of constructivist thought. McNamee speaks for social constructionism. Efran speaks for radical constructivism. Warren speaks for personal construct psychology (PCP). Raskin moderates and pushes each speaker to clarify where their views overlap and where they split.
How each speaker found their theory
McNamee started in personal construct psychology as an undergraduate. She calls herself “promiscuous” because she mixes theoretical frameworks based on what works in the moment rather than committing to one canon. Her home field is communication, not psychology. She treats language as any embodied activity, not just words. For McNamee, the appeal of social constructionism is that it shifts focus away from individual pathology and toward patterns of relationship.
Efran came to radical constructivism through family therapy circles. He read Gregory Bateson’s work, then discovered Humberto Maturana through an article by Paul Dell. Maturana’s central claim grabbed him: living systems are “informationally closed.” You cannot directly instruct a person or a system to change. You can only trigger it, and how it responds depends on its own internal structure. Efran uses the toaster and washing machine example. Electricity triggers both, but the electricity doesn’t tell either machine what to do; their structure does.
Warren stumbled into PCP by accident while researching death and dying. A colleague introduced him to the Death Threat Index, which led him to George Kelly’s original work. Warren approached PCP as a philosopher first. He found it more rigorous than most psychology he had studied, and it gave him a way to treat clients as people on a shared journey rather than as objects to diagnose.
Where the three theories split
Raskin frames one major divide as internal versus external emphasis. Radical constructivism and PCP focus on the individual’s internal structure. Social constructionism focuses on interaction between people. McNamee agrees with this framing but argues all three theories now function as conversational resources rather than competing truths.
Efran explains that Maturana’s version of “radical” doesn’t mean extreme. It means thoroughly consistent. He builds his theory from biology, not philosophy, starting with two facts: we live in language, and we are observers. Maturana calls language a “coordination of coordinations of action.” Words carry meaning because a community agrees to distinguish them, not because they point to fixed external truths.
Warren pushes back here. He worries radical constructivism risks sliding into solipsism, where meaning collapses into pure subjectivity. He argues human beings need some grounded, shared reality, not just private structure. He also raises math as a test case: two plus two equals four regardless of culture or country. That consistency suggests something beyond pure social construction.
The relativism debate
Raskin steers the group toward relativism, a common criticism leveled at all three theories. McNamee rejects the idea that relativism means “anything goes.” She uses a classroom example: on the first day, twenty students sit wherever they want. By the second meeting, they return to the same seats. If someone new sits in your usual seat, you object. Shared expectations form through repeated coordination, not through fixed truth. She calls this relativist, but not rampant relativism, because behavior is still bound by relationships and history.
Efran adds that Maturana’s system doesn’t worry about relativism because no two words are true synonyms. Each word survives in a language because it marks a distinct, useful coordination of action. If a word became truly redundant, it would disappear.
Warren isn’t convinced. He argues you have to step outside psychological discourse entirely to ask deeper questions, drawing on Husserl’s concept of bracketing. He wants to examine how much of any claim comes from the speaker’s specific position, such as their gender, nationality, or age, rather than from something universal.
Finding common ground
By the end, the panel circles back to a question from Wittgenstein that McNamee raises: how do we go on together? She argues the real task isn’t identifying one correct theory. It’s working out livable agreements across different perspectives, holding your own ground while staying open to another person’s view.
Efran closes with Maturana’s claim that science itself isn’t a description of objective reality. It’s simply one way humans have chosen to live and coordinate together. Warren offers a closing metaphor from Carroll: two searchlights illuminating the same field from different angles. Each theory reveals something useful depending on your purpose. For Warren, working clinically with real patients, PCP remains the most practical lens, whatever its philosophical company.