Development Through Work and Play

Adopting a work-play framework that attends to the adaptive, self-enhancing potential of play in work and human development contributes to an enhanced conceptualization of careers, both within career theory generally and the developmental perspective on careers specifically. Such a framework also promotes investigations of the connections between these life domains. Five proposals are made to imbue the developmental perspective on careers with a work-play fusion. These proposals examine how a work-play integration in vocational development theory, research, and counseling practice can foster optimal human development and therein aim to advance a revitalized developmental paradigm of career. Ultimately, theory construction and research inquiry that comprehends and investigates an integration of life roles in the domains of work and play could foster adaptability in human life-span development.     

Mental Imagery in Career Counseling and Life Planning: A Review of Research and Intervention Methods

The use of imagery in career counseling and life planning continues to increase just as the use of imagery in counseling and psychotherapy increases. The rationale for using imagery in career counseling and life planning is the same as in counseling and psychotherapy: It allows the client and counselor to bring into awareness unconscious material that is already influencing choices and makes this material usable in future planning. Imagey also allows the client to try on alternative roles. Several studies are cited that indicate that the imagery components of daydreams and fantasies are useful tools for career exploration and life planning when they are accessible to clients and properly processed. Relevant counseling applications and research studies are cited. Some recent tools for eliciting and processing these daydreams and fantasies are presented, and limits as well as benefits of techniques are discussed.     

Career support for migrants: Transformation or adaptation?

The complex interfaces created by migration not only challenge core beliefs about the purpose of career guidance and counseling but also about the precise nature and level of the support required for migrants. However, the issue has had little academic attention. While traditional theories informing the practice of career guidance and counseling implicitly reflect a commitment to social equality, they were developed in relatively homogenous Western capitalist contexts that were strongly individualized, masculine, secular, action and future focused. As career guidance and counseling services in more individualized countries seek to meet the needs of a growing number of clients from more collectivist cultures, the universal relevance of such models is increasingly open to challenge. This article explores three core challenges posed by migration for the theory and practice of career guidance and counseling. The first relates to the very purpose of these types of services for migrants; the second, to the way in which migration requires a realignment of the relationship of theory with practice; and the third relates to the need to redefine service delivery models for this client group. The extent to which notions of “quality” in services are culturally dependent will also be considered, together with the potential for general service improvements being stimulated by the provision of high quality services for migrants.     

Maladaptive repetition and career construction

The role of repeated maladaptive relationship patterns established early in life has been widely studied with the goal of understanding the various factors and processes that contribute to and occur during development and psychological adaptation. The effects of maladaptive patterns have also been studied with regard to the goal of guiding interventions. The present article is intended to highlight the contribution of Career Construction Theory (CCT) for the integration of the concept of maladaptive repetition into the theory and practice of career counseling. It begins with a constructivist conceptualization of maladaptive repetition and proceeds to situate this concept within the contexts of both CCT and the constructivist conception of career indecision. The article then presents a case study, discusses difficulties that arise during career decision-making, and analyzes the maladaptive cycle rupture considering the client's perspective about her transformation.     

Maladaptive repetition and career construction

The role of repeated maladaptive relationship patterns established early in life has been widely studied with the goal of understanding the various factors and processes that contribute to and occur during development and psychological adaptation. The effects of maladaptive patterns have also been studied with regard to the goal of guiding interventions. The present article is intended to highlight the contribution of Career Construction Theory (CCT) for the integration of the concept of maladaptive repetition into the theory and practice of career counseling. It begins with a constructivist conceptualization of maladaptive repetition and proceeds to situate this concept within the contexts of both CCT and the constructivist conception of career indecision. The article then presents a case study, discusses difficulties that arise during career decision-making, and analyzes the maladaptive cycle rupture considering the client's perspective about her transformation.     

A Relational Approach to Career Counseling: Theoretical Integration and Practical Application

This article reviews the current status of career theory in practice and presents a theoretical overview of relational theory and its logical extension to the career domain. Despite the emergence of literature regarding the interconnectedness of career progress and the quality of relationships in one's life (e.g., D. L. Blustein, 2001; D. L. Blustein, M. S. Prezioso, & D. E. P. Schultheiss, 1995; D. E. P. Schultheiss, H. M. Kress, A. J. Manzi, & J. M. Glasscock, 2001), counseling practice is limited by the absence of a meaningful approach to intervene in clients' relational and career worlds. The relational career counseling approach moves counseling toward a contextually based relational perspective to facilitating career progress. This approach is illustrated with a case example.     

Developmental Career Assessment and Counseling: The C-DAC Model

The C-DAC model seeks to implement current development theory and to use innovative assessment measures together with improved counseling methods to improve vocational and life career counseling. At this stage, the project pays more attention to assessment, partly because if one is to counsel with career maturity in mind, one must understand the developmental status of the counselee. In career counseling, facts as well as feelings are important. Therefore, in this article the authors deal with the assessment of career development in detail, treating interests (measured by the Strong) and expressed preferences as basic status data to be viewed in the light of career maturity, the salience of life roles, and the values sought in life as moderator variables. The instruments are described and their use shown in a sample profile for assessment and checking by the reader in another readily available published source.     

Perspectives actuelles du conseil psychologique en orientation

The relation between psychology as a discipline and career counseling has always been difficult to precisely define in France. Sometimes they are considered as very close; sometimes they are seen as independent. The history of career counseling is full of this ambivalent relationship. Nowadays, current transformations in organizations and in the world of work, together with an increasing number of counseling demands, bring practitioners and researchers to reconsider this relationship. The present article explores the conditions of a psychological perspective of career counseling in France. The comparison with English speaking contexts serves as a starting point. Practical, theoretical and epistemological issues are explored in order to define propositions concerning a psychological perspective of career counseling in the French context. The strategic professional role of the psychologist is presented as a core competence in the practice of interviews. A holistic perspective, centered on the interaction between the context and the individual, from the point of view of an ecological development of well-being, is described and discussed.     

Identifying process variables in career counseling: A research agenda

Remarkably little is known about what underlying processes and mechanisms lead to effective change in career counseling. This article examines potential reasons why career counseling process research has been infrequently conducted and provides 10 avenues from psychotherapy process research, and the limited pool of existing career counseling process research, that hold promise for advancing a productive process-research agenda in career counseling. These 10 avenues include: (a) examining the working alliance and five promising counselor techniques; (b) reconceptualizing career counseling as a process of learning, and investigating the processes that lead to effective learning; (c) investigating differences in career counseling process and outcome due to subtype membership, cultural perspectives, and other critical client attributes; (d) investigating differences in career counseling process and outcome based on counselors’ levels of self-efficacy, cultural perspectives, and other critical counselor attributes; (e) examining influential session events; (f) utilizing a common problem resolution metric for examining change across clients; (g) examining client change longitudinally to examine stability of change and functional practicality of assessed outcomes; (h) examining cognitive processes that may be mediating the career counseling process; (i) developing molecular and global taxonomies of counselor behaviors; and (j) utilizing advances in methodological approaches and statistical analyses.     

Spiritual Formation in Christian School Counseling Programs

This article makes the case that Christian school counselors should be more directly engaged in student spiritual formation. To accomplish this aim, the historical context for the discussion is first explored, followed by a review of contemporary medical and psychological research associating a positive spirituality with healthy functioning across a variety of developmental domains. The argument is then situated within developmental theory and systems thinking as well as the Christian theological—philosophical writings of John Macmurray. Recommendations for improving Christian school counseling practice as they relate to student spiritual formation are included.     

the chaos theory of careers

The Chaos Theory of Careers (CTC; Pryor & Bright, 2011) construes both individuals and the contexts in which they develop their careers in terms of complex dynamical systems. Such systems perpetually operate under influences of stability and change both internally and in relation to each other. The CTC introduces new concepts to account for previously neglected phenomena. The CTC was formulated to address identified shortcomings in existing career theory. Early theories had positive aspects but were partial, segmental, too rational, too individual focused, and divorced from much counseling practice. The authors found attempts at converging the theories unconvincing.     

促进当事人的改变：基于治疗性最近发展区的视角

作为心理治疗的有效区域, 治疗性最近发展区是指当事人当前适应问题经验的能力和通过治疗师的协助能够达成的潜在能力之间的距离。早期的同化模型理论更注重对心理治疗改变过程的描述, 治疗性最近发展区理论则能够进一步解释治疗师在不同阶段的帮助策略。在研究上, 治疗性最近发展区理论建立在非传统的方法论基础上, 通过不断累积个案的质性研究, 帮助治疗师理解和解释不同咨询效果的互动过程, 并使理论得到持续发展; 在临床上, 治疗性最近发展区为理解心理治疗过程中倒退现象提供了新视角, 并能够有效指导在治疗过程中采取挑战性还是支持性策略。未来研究可从临床上探索经验丰富的治疗师的实践智慧, 也可选取较大跨度的治疗对话序列, 对不同流派的特点, 从不同参与者的视角出发进行研究, 进而深化对心理治疗过程机制的理解。     

Career and personal counseling: Comparing process and outcome

Increasingly, there is a call to support the integration of career and personal counseling. However, few empirical studies have examined the overlap between these 2 domains. This study examined how career and personal counseling compared on both process and outcome measures. The participants included real clients who sought career and personal counseling at 3 college counseling centers in the U.S. The findings indicated that except in the area of expectations about counseling, there were no significant differences between career counseling and personal counseling. The implications for counseling practice and training are discussed.     

Existential considerations for contemporary career counseling

This article was written to remind career counselors of the potential depth and subjective impact of both unemployment and employment transitions. An existential framework is used in discussing today's world of work, previous and contemporary career counseling models, existential theory in career counseling, and existential considerations for career counselors. Results from 3 research projects are discussed in light of I. D. Yalom's (1980, 1998) 4 existential themes. Using quotations from participants, the authors move beyond theoretical ideas and underscore the real‐life importance of including the individual's larger subjective perspective when engaging in career counseling. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Developmental Therapy: Integrating Developmental Processes into the Clinical Practice

The facilitation of development may be considered the primary goal of counseling and therapy. Developmental theory, however, remains relatively divorced from direct clinical work. Developmental therapy is oriented toward identifying how to use basic developmental theory in clinical consultation. Developmental therapy differs from life span developmental psychology in emphasizing specific processes of change, growth, and development rather than outcomes and life stages. Thus, developmental therapy supplements life span theory and provides specific suggestions for clinical-counseling interventions that may be used to assess the developmental level of a client on a specific task, select counseling skills and theory to match client cognitive-developmental level, and obtain feedback on the effectiveness of the intervention that will enable one to change counseling style to meet client needs. Basic to developmental therapy is a modern adaptatio of Platonic and Piagetian constructs that allows the systematic integration of counseling and therapy theory. Implications of the model for training and practice are discussed.     

Using client feedback in training of future counseling psychologists: An evidence-based and social justice practice

Training in counseling psychology has evolved to emphasize both evidence-based practice (EBP) and social justice, though these two dimensions have often seemed disconnected, or even at odds in the practice of psychotherapy. The Partners for Change Outcome Management System (PCOMS), an EBP that monitors treatment outcomes and the therapeutic alliance across treatment (often called “client feedback”), may offer a means to connect evidence-based and socially just practices. The purpose of this article was to outline how the use of PCOMS in psychotherapy and supervision can serve as a useful training tool that is a form of EBP and also promotes a socially just paradigm in psychotherapy. We also offer an implementation example from a counseling psychology doctoral program to demonstrate how PCOMS can be used with clients in psychotherapy and included within the supervisory process.     

GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT GENERALIZATION: HOW A THEORY OF SKILL DEVELOPMENT EXPLAINS BOTH GENERALITY AND SPECIFICITY*

Within a skill-theory framework, the traditional opposition between generalization and specificity is resolved. Neither generalization nor specificity is considered the normal state. Instead, they are both phenomena that can be predicted and explained in terms of skill structures and functional mechanisms of development or learning. A person acquires a skill in a specific context and must work to gradually extend it to other contexts. Within a task domain and across related domains, a set of structural transformations predict the order of generalization of the skill. Range of generalization of a given skill at a point in time varies widely across people and situations as a function of specified functional mechanisms. Generalization is maximized when (a) tasks are similar and familiar, (b) the environment provides opportunities for practice and support, (c) the person has had time to consolidate skills at the relevant developmental level, and (d) he or she is intelligent and in an emotional state facilitative of the particular skill. True generalization must be distinguished from optimal-level synchrony, where new capacities emerge across domains as a new developmental level emerges.     

Counseling chaos: Techniques for practitioners

The chaos theory of careers draws together a number of themes in current theory and research. This article applies some of these themes to career counseling. The chaos theory of careers is outlined, and a conceptual framework for understanding assessment and counseling issues that focuses on convergent and emergent qualities is presented. Three practical techniques focusing on emergent quality concepts derived from chaos theory are then detailed. It is concluded that a major ongoing challenge for career counselors is to assist clients to understand the reality and confront the challenges of living and working “on the edge of chaos.”     

Battered Women: A Developmental Life-Career Counseling Perspective

The authors describe a career counseling strategy based on specific psychosocial characteristics of battered women. The approach is developmental in nature, focusing on the client's self-concept. A group format based on a pilot intervention is proposed to assist battered women in developing appropriate life and career decision-making skills.