Working with unrealistic or unshared hope in the counselling session

Hope has long been identified as an important therapeutic factor in counselling. Further, research evidence for the importance of hope to counselling practice and outcome is abundant. However, the field is only beginning to explicitly consider how hope can be effectively and intentionally practised. One of the most challenging dilemmas encountered by counsellors committed to working with this important therapeutic factor is that of so-called unrealistic hope. In this paper, we outline two real-life counselling vignettes illustrating unrealistic hope, and consider these scenarios alongside relevant scholarship and practice experience. Guiding principles and practices for conceptualising and working with unrealistic hope are offered as a means of beginning the conversation about this complex aspect of working with client hope.     

When do employees cross boundaries? Individual and contextual determinants of career mobility

This study investigates the joint effects of individual characteristics and the labour market on career mobility. We propose that level of education, openness to experience, and a favourable labour market relate positively to employees crossing organizational, industrial, and occupational boundaries. Management programme alumni (N = 503) provided information through an online survey about their career histories, their level of education, and their openness to experience. Additionally, we used the unemployment rate as an indicator for yearly changes in the labour market. The results of our cross-classified multilevel analysis indicate that both individual characteristics and the labour market are determinants of career mobility. Level of education had a positive effect on organizational and industrial boundary crossing, and changes in the labour market related to organizational boundary crossing. Against our assumptions, openness to experience had no effect on career mobility, and none of the predictors were related to occupational boundary crossing. Our results demonstrate the importance of investigating career mobility from a boundary perspective combined with a focus on both individual and contextual characteristics. The dominance of education compared to personality and the difficulty of explaining occupational mobility open new research avenues and yield practical implications for employees, career counsellors, and organizations.     

Exploring the links between gender,dwelling, and career orientations of African emerging adults

The study explored the socio-ecological (i.e. gender and geographical location) influences on the career orientations of emerging adults. The participants comprised a convenience sample of 159 black African South African university students (57% rural, 43% urban; 63% females, 37% males; mean age = 19.0, SD = 2.24). The emerging adults completed a career orientations inventory and also self-reported their demographics. We applied hierarchical regression analysis to predict the emerging adults’ career orientations from their gender and place of dwelling (geographical location) controlling for age. Results indicate that gender predicts interest in entrepreneurial creativity orientations for males rather than for females, and interest in service-oriented occupations for females compared to males. Geographical location predicted interest in entrepreneurial, general management, and service type of occupations for those from the rural rather than urban areas. Urban location predicted interest in technical and functional careers anchors. Career orientations among South African emerging adults appeared to be gendered and tied to place of geographical origin, suggesting social context socialisation influences.     

Universal stories: How narratives satisfy core motives

Abstract

For millennia, narratives have been a primary mode of oral discourse. Narrative presentation of information has been shown to facilitate interpersonal and group communication. However, research indicates that narratives are more than merely an adaptive mode of communication. Narrative is a fundamental – and perhaps foundational – element of social and cultural life. The present article posits that the centrality of narrative in social life is due to narrative’s ability to help satisfy the five core social motives, as identified by Fiske belonging, understanding, control, self-enhancement, and trust. In so doing, this article reviews empirical and theoretical work examining basic narrative processes, autobiographical narratives, and entertainment narrative consumption to illustrate how narrative thought helps to satisfies core human motives and in turn, how the narrative construction process informs self and identity formation.     

Examining the factor structure of narrative meaning-making for stressful events and relations with psychological distress

This study examined the underlying factor structure of 15 narrative meaning-making indices for narratives of stressful events, and explored the incremental validity of the narrative factor solution over and above general personality traits in predicting various indices of psychological well-being. Two-hundred and twenty four undergraduates (M_age?=?19.2 years, SD_age?=?2.1; 114 males and 110 females; 67.6% Caucasian, 12.0% East Asian, 7.6% African-American, 4.0% South Asian, 2.2% Hispanic, and 6.7% as mixed or Other origin) wrote about the most traumatic experience in their life, and completed a series of psychological questionnaires. The narratives were coded in 15 ways theoretically derived from the narrative meaning-making literature. A series of exploratory structural equation models indicated that a four-factor solution best approximated the data. The four factors were: positive processing, negative processing, integrative meaning, and structure. All four factors related differentially to indices of well-being over and above traits. There appear to be four distinct, but related, factors of narrative meaning-making for memories of stressful events, which shed light on the nuanced relations with well-being.     

The Individual Career Counseling Needs and Experiences of Female Survivors of Partner Violence

The impact of partner violence on women's employment and career development is profound. Career counselors may contribute substantially to these women's rehabilitation. This study examined employment and career counseling needs, barriers experienced, and counseling satisfaction of female survivors of partner violence (N = 71). The women participated in community‐ and research‐based individual career counseling services designed to promote their short‐ and long‐term career development. The authors conducted correlational, t‐test, and logistic regression analyses and found that barriers differed by race/ethnicity, age, number of children, and career service needs. Results provide important information about survivors' career counseling service access and needs.     

The Role of Character Strengths and Importance of Family on Mexican American College Students' Career Decision Self‐Efficacy

This study examined how character strengths and the importance of family influenced Mexican American college students' (N = 129) career decision self‐efficacy. Findings from a multiple regression analysis indicated that psychological grit and curiosity were significant predictors of career decision self‐efficacy. The authors discuss the importance of these findings and provide recommendations for future research.     

“This is My Community”: Reproducing and Resisting Boundaries of Exclusion in Contested Public Spaces

The way that public space is structured has significant implications for identity, social interaction, and participation in society. For those experiencing homelessness, with no or limited private space, survival hinges on the accessibility and livability of public space. However, the increasing privatization of public space in the United States has contributed to the implementation of anti‐homeless ordinances in cities, restricting sitting, standing, panhandling, and sleeping in public. This study analyzes data from interviews with housed and unhoused community members, text from a local policy document, and ethnographic observations to explore how boundaries between “insiders” and “outsiders” are drawn in public space and mediated through individual discourse. Our findings suggest that boundaries of exclusion are constructed through dominant narratives that portray the unhoused as a threat to safety and economic vitality, thus justifying the need for regulation and punishment through the criminalization of homelessness. Yet, informants also demonstrate resistance to this narrative by discussing how criminalization of homelessness perpetuates dehumanization, violence, and economic inequality. Policy implications for the regulation of public space are discussed.     

Regulating emotion and identity by narrating harm

This study examined how narration of harm experiences can regulate self and emotions in ways relevant to well-being. Participants (n = 88, 65% female) were asked to provide 6 narratives about instances when they were victims of harm and 6 narratives about instances when they were perpetrators of harm. Narratives were coded for extent of exploration, growth, damage conclusions and resolution. Participants drew damage conclusions more frequently in victim narratives and growth conclusions more frequently in perpetrator narratives. Both the type of experience (victim or perpetrator) and the way the experience was narrated (references to damage conclusions and resolution) predicted emotion and identity implications, which were, in turn, related to well-being. Implications for narrative approaches to self-regulation are discussed.     

Re‐Presentations of Space in Hollywood Movies: An Event‐Indexing Analysis

Popular movies present chunk‐like events (scenes and subscenes) that promote episodic, serial updating of viewers’ representations of the ongoing narrative. Event‐indexing theory would suggest that the beginnings of new scenes trigger these updates, which in turn require more cognitive processing. Typically, a new movie event is signaled by an establishing shot, one providing more background information and a longer look than the average shot. Our analysis of 24 films reconfirms this. More important, we show that, when returning to a previously shown location, the re‐establishing shot reduces both context and duration while remaining greater than the average shot. In general, location shifts dominate character and time shifts in event segmentation of movies. In addition, over the last 70 years re‐establishing shots have become more like the noninitial shots of a scene. Establishing shots have also approached noninitial shot scales, but not their durations. Such results suggest that film form is evolving, perhaps to suit more rapid encoding of narrative events.