A dialectical constructivist view of the creation of personal meaning

A dialectical constructivist approach, based on a theory of constructive op erators (TCO), is presented. This theory explains human psychological funct ioning as produced by dynamic syntheses of a variety of schemes, the "softw are," and mental "hardware" operators. In this model the activity of the su bject is captured by means of such mental operations as allocation of atten tion to, or interruption of the application of schemes, as well as by execu tive processing. These all influence the probability of certain schemes bei ng activated and synthesized in a field of internal complexity. Using this theory as a base, the process of meaning construction in therapy is describ ed as a dialectical synthesis between two major types of processing, concep tual and experiential. These act together to constantly generate explanatio ns of experience. Three important moments in the construction process, emot ional arousal, symbolization, and reflection are discussed. Finally a thera py transcript is analyzed in terms of the TCO to illustrate the dynamic syn theses and mental operations involved in generating meaning in therapy.