Relationships and Emotional Experience in a Process of Gay Identity Development: A Case-Study Based on Personal Construct Theory

A case-study of gay identity development is presented based on Kelly's personal construct theory. The subject is a married man in his early thirties. Repertory grid technique is used to investigate the subject's construing of his relationships with gay men, and Kelly's account of emotion in terms of constructs of transition is used in analysing the emotional dimensions of the subject's experience. Three dimensions of interpersonal construing emerged from the grid analysis: emotional impact, negative affect and friendship. Five aspects of the subject's emotional experience are discussed: aggression, threat, anxiety, hostility and guilt. Some implications of the study for counselling are outlined, its limitations noted, and possible avenues for further research identified. It is argued that the study serves to illustrate the value of Kelly's perspective in understanding the interpersonal and emotional dimensions of gay identity development.     

Stimulus control of generalized imitation in subnormal children

Generalized imitation was established in three young subnormal children by reinforcing their imitations of a limited set of modeled actions in the presence of a large ball. A discrimination was then established by training nonimitation in the presence of a small ball. Imitation was then tested for various other ball sizes. Rate of imitation decreased as the test stimuli increasingly differed in size from the large ball. Imitations that were never reinforced occurred at about the same rate as those that were reinforced when in the presence of the large ball in training.