Unprecedented times for many but not for all: Personal construct perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are considered in terms of personal construct theory, including the diagnostic constructs proposed by George Kelly. The pandemic is seen to have caused transitions in people’s construing, experienced, for example, as anxiety, threat, guilt, and shame; and strategies to cope with it have included constriction and hostility. The reactions both of individuals and of governments differ, reflecting the individuality of construing, and can be usefully viewed in terms of personal construct perspectives on choice and decision-making. Losses resulting from the pandemic may be dealt with by a process of meaning reconstruction, and alternative constructions of it may usefully include consideration of positive changes that it has brought about, including reevaluation of the superordinate constructs of individuals and societies.