Job Development from a Counselor's Perspective: A Training Workshop

An inservice training workshop for employment counselors on the skill of job development is reviewed. Evaluations proved there is a need for additional inservice training on job development skills, including follow-up, marketing, using outside resources, matching employer needs with client capabilities, speaking before groups, effective verbal communication with employers, and overcoming objections.     

Career Indecision: A Family Systems Perspective

In existing theories of vocational development career indecision is generally attributed to character deficits in the young adult. The authors present an alternative, family systems perspective on career indecision. Also, they speculate on the family patterns that contribute to career indecisiveness and on the functions that this problem may serve within the larger family network.     

Career Education and the University: A Faculty Perspective

Students lack reliable information regarding various majors and career possibilities. Frequently, seniors are still unaware of their occupational goals on graduation. A “No-preference” category is proposed in which all entering freshmen are placed, permitting great experimentation with courses. A key element in the program would be the use of academic advisors who do not haue a vested interest in the recruitment of students for a particular college or department. Despite various cross-pressures, faculty must consider the ethical ramifications of recruiting students into their disciplines without considering opportunities for placement upon graduation.     

A Career Developmental Perspective on the Therapeutic Alliance: Implications for Counseling

This review explores the role played by childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) in selecting a career in the field of mental health and the potential positive and deleterious effects of these career‐choice motives on the therapeutic alliance. The reviewed findings support the assumption that CEM may serve as a precursor for career choice of professions in the mental health field. Implications are suggested for the counselor/therapist–client relationship, also known as the therapeutic alliance, as well as for career counseling.     

Farm Families in Career Transitions: Descriptive Characteristics and an Intervention

Characteristics of farm family members involved in workshops that are designed to assist them in developing career plans and making transitions to other careers are described. Age, sex, educational level, and career change characteristics of workshop participants are presented. Vocational identity scores using My Vocational Situation, interest patterns based on the Self-Directed Search, and 6-month follow-up data are also presented to describe the farm family members served through this intervention. My family went back four generations on this piece of land. Farming wasn't a job; it was a way of life. I couldn't go to the auction. I couldn't see it all being taken. I feel like such a failure.     

Career Counseling and Vocational Psychology in Portugal: A Political Perspective

In this article, we present an overview of the political context of vocational psychology and career counseling in Portugal. The essence of our position is that career counseling needs to encompass all the major tasks of personal and social development, beyond the traditional focus on primarily vocational/occupational goals. Given the importance of social and political factors that are apparent in an analysis of the Portuguese climate within career development, we propose that vocational psychology must go beyond a conceptualization of vocational behavior and intervention based on a person–environment fit model and must try to enhance strategies for the development of persons in a broader sense. We further propose that we need to provide career counseling not only at critical decision points, but throughout the life-span, and should not focus merely on occupational details, but on all matters of the development of the person as a whole. Finally, we suggest a perspective on career counseling and vocational psychology that is more responsive to our cultural and historical context and which is sensitive to the reality of a new political era in Portugal.     

Career Development of Black South African Adolescents: A Developmental-Contextual Perspective

South Africa is undergoing rapid change in a post-apartheid era. This article uses the developmental-contextual perspective to examine the extent to which contextual and individual factors dynamically interact in the career development of Black South African adolescents. Furthermore, interventions that may assist in the career development of Black adolescents, as well as the implications of this research for counselors, are provided.     

Biographical Transitions From a Midlife Perspective

Recent advances in life-span developmental psychology suggest that individual lives can be characterized as a series of interrelated transitions. The question of when and how past transitions have been experienced and how they affect subsequent ageing may be critical to understanding midlife adjustment. The aim of this study is (a) to investigate timing and emotional valence of experienced normative and silent transitions of middle-aged persons, and (b) to discover the impact of past transitions on current well-being and on anticipation of old age. Analysis of interview data from 268 persons suggest a considerable stability in the basic structure of human biography, but also evidence for age group, gender, and personality differences in the subjective perception of the life-course, adjustment and future anticipation in middle age. Emotional valence of puberty and that of personality variables were found to be important predictors of actual psychological well-being and anticipation of old age.     

Gendered Career Paths: A Life Course Perspective on Returning to School

We applied a life course perspective to an examination of work-to-school transitions, and highlighted the individual and family-level factors that differentially shape the career pathways of men and women. We employed data from a sample of employed middle-class men and women in dual-earner couples (N?=?1,408 couples) to examine the relationship between returning to school and prior educational attainment, individual biographic pacing (age, timing of marriage), job history, current job conditions, psychological resources, and family demands. Results support several hypothesized gender differences in the return to school pathway. Women with the heaviest combination of work and family demands were the most likely to return, an unexpected finding that we discuss with reference to both personal and structural resources.     

A Swedish Perspective on the Importance of Bourdieu's Theories for Career Counseling

For many years, professional career counseling practice has been based on psychological rather than sociological theories. In this article, the authors argue that sociological theories, particularly that of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (P. Bourdieu & L. Wacquant, 1992), are important for the framework of the counselor.     

Needed: A Rededication to the Counselor's Primary Commitment

The counseling aspect of the counselor's role has been eroded recently by a number of negative influences. If this erosion is not halted the counselor will not have enough time to counsel because of an overinvolvement in noncounseling activities. Counselors must focus on and preserve counseling as their primary function if the counseling profession is to have a clear identity.     

A Counselor's Primer on Postpartum Depression

Women are more likely than men to experience depression, and they are particularly vulnerable to depression during the postpartum period. Postpartum depression is distinguished from normal postpartum adjustment, postpartum blues, and postpartum psychosis. Biological, psychodynamic, and diathesis-stress perspectives on postpartum depression are described. Counselors are encouraged to fashion individualized treatments for postpartum depression that are matched to the stressors and vulnerabilities of their clients.     

The Prayer of Francis of Assisi: A Counselor's Prayer

The “Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi” is offered as a possible prayer for counselors and related to accepted ethical standards of professional counselors.     

Later Life Career Planning: A New Challenge for Career Counselors

This article discusses the issue of later-life career planning for adults. Many older adults choose to return to employment rather than enter the traditional retirement stage of their life cycle. The article considers career options for the older adult.     

A Vocational Evaluation Program for Handicapped Students: Focus on the Counselor's Role

The author describes a multidisciplinary vocational evaluation program for handicapped students that integrates the vocational evaluation and special education triennial reevaluation processes.     

The Role of Perceived Barriers in Career Development: A Social Cognitive Perspective

Recent research has verified the claim that high school and college students perceive a variety of career-related barriers. Lent, Brown, and Hackett's (1994, 1996) social cognitive career theory and Weiner's (1979, 1985, 1986) attribution theory are useful approaches to increase understanding of the role that perceived barriers play in career development. This article presents a brief overview of the primary components of each theory as they relate to career-related barriers, discusses counseling implications associated with each approach, and provides ideas for future research to explore the utility of these theories in explaining career-related barriers.