SOCIAL AND PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS - A DIVISION LEFT UNRESOLVED

Mancuso's (1996) article is to be welcomed for its attempt to bring to gether social constructionism, personal construct theory and narrative psychology. Whilst the underlying tendency of the three approaches -t o view the text as self-enclosed and constitutive of reality-is drawn out well, the differences between them are underplayed. Most significa ntly, these include the difference between the individualist ontology in Mancuso's version of personal construct theory and the social ontol ogy that is the basis of social constructionism. The fact that Mancuso ignores these differences in ontology ultimately thwarts his commenda ble aim of reintroducing issues of individual psychology into a constr uctionist framework.