"A genuine new departure and a spirited contribution to the psychology of personality." —Jerome S. Bruner

This original theory of personality is based on the concept that there are many workable ways by which individuals can contruct their world. George Kelly's starting point and basic premise is that people's processes are psychologically channeled by the ways they anticipate events rather than by the ways they react to them. We develop new means of overcoming obstacles; we are, therefore, neither prisoners of our environment nor victims of our past.

In Dr. Kelly's groundbreaking theory, the patterns of our make-up, which he calls contructs, are the key to changing old pattersn. Each person anticipates events differently, and Dr. Kelly shows how we can begin to understand each person's unique constructs. In this way, a person is enabled to create alternative constructions—finding a sense of meaning in life, regaining control over his or her environment, and establishing new roads to mental health.

This volume consists of the first three chapters of Kelly's two-volume work The Psychology of Personal Contructs.

Monsignor George Kelly, one of the great churchmen of our time, turns a keen but loving eye on the contemporary Church in this magnificent new book. On several notable occasions in the past, Monsignor Kelly has set before his readers the status quo of Roman Catholicism in the United States. But in this new book, he combines as never before an unclouded vision of unfortunate aspects of the contemporary Church with a robust optimism concerning what lies ahead.

He rivals John Paul II in his uncanny ability to go to the heart of the matter and put his finger on where things have gone wrong and are still going wrong. In Second Spring of the Church in America, his negative diagnosis and positive prognosis center on the role of the bishops. Readers will find here surprising revelations of just how bad it is in many areas of Catholicism in this country. But Kelly is not interested in amassing a catalog of errors for its own sake. His kindly pastoral eye is ever on the ready for a remedy. The still-imperfect renewal called for by Vatican II is a task for all, but in a special way the bishops must step forward, individually and collectively, to acknowledge what has gone wrong and to lead the Church into the third millennium.

Perhaps no other living Catholic could have written this magnificent book, combining cold critique with warm-hearted confidence in what lies ahead for the Church in America.