Counselling and the Life Course

Léonie Sugarman

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781446237250
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

`Essential reading for student, fledgling and experienced counsellors alike? - Mark Edwards, Nurturing Potential

`Beautifully written and well researched and full of useful structured exercise for therapists and clients, this is a combination of psychology textbook and counselling handbook - theoretical a, yet practical? - Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal

Counselling and the Life Course introduces counsellors to the concept of the life course as a multidimensional and multidisciplinary framework for thinking about clients? lives within and beyond the counselling setting. It aims to give counsellors an understanding of human development, and how it impacts practically upon their work with clients.

The book engages with the tension between, on the one hand, recognizing age and life stage as important dimensions of difference, and on the other, avoiding the pitfalls of age stereotyping and ageist discrimination. At the same time, Counselling and the Life Course shows how the concept of the life course can be used as a framework for considering the commonalities between different life stages. This provides a focus for counsellors of how to draw on their existing skills and expertise when working with clients of a different age and life stage to those with whom they generally meet. The impact of both counsellor and client age on the counselling relationship is also considered.

The book includes an `Activity Trail? of structured exercises in order to encourage reflection on the concepts discussed and their relevance to clients, the readers themselves, and their counselling practice.

1

---

Composing a life

‘If you could see your life’s shape, you would find its features to be, like those on your face, universally human yet completely unique’.

(Tristine Rainer, 1998)

Clients of all ages are constantly engaged in actively creating and recreating their lives. They constantly adjust to changing circumstances and life events in ways that depend, at least in part, on their biographical experience. In other words, life stage, or place in the life course, matters to clients. It positions them in a social and family context – perhaps as a part of the ‘younger’ or the ‘older’ generation; or possibly within the ‘sandwich’ generation, caught between the demands of teenage children and ageing parents. Models of the life course can help counsellors orient themselves in relation to their clients’ lives, recognising how life problems take on a new hue in the psychosocial contexts of successive life stages (Carlsen, 1988). The present book strives to present the life course as a framework – an aerial view, if you like – for conceptualising a range of ideas and tools that are relevant to counselling at any life stage. These include things like the experience of transitions, the balance between growth and loss, and the tension between continuity and change. Even the most assiduous of clients spend more time outside the counselling relationship than within it, and the concept of the life course provides a framework for locating counselling practice within the client’s wider and evolving life space. When counselling from a life course perspective, clients are seen as ‘existing at the centre of a matrix where life events combine and conspire with the ageing process to present each person, at any one time, with a unique set of challenges’ (Woolfe, 2001: 347).

The life course

Counsellors need some way of encapsulating such human experience – a flexible framework that is both sufficiently substantive to anchor and support the disparate pieces that make up a person’s life, and sufficiently malleable to accommodate the uniqueness of individually patterned lives (Gilmore, 1973). The life course (Runyan, 1978; Davey, 2001) – the rhythmic, fluctuating pattern of human life, marked out by sequences of key events and interactions between self and environment – provides such a framework. A life course perspective acknowledges that the trajectory from birth to death is highly personal and unique to each individual, and yet also contains experiences and events common to most members of a social group (Davey, 2001). It draws on material from individual, interpersonal, ecological and macrohistorical vantage points in order to understand human experience and behaviours (Silva and Leiderman, 1986). Within the life course, a person’s life span development – the broad changes and continuities that constitute a person’s identity and growth (Seifert et al., 2000) – can be explored.

Images will often communicate better than words the ramifications of a life course perspective, and these are the focus of Activity 1. This is the first stopping point in what can be described as an ‘Activity Trail’ threading its way through the text. The analogy is with the ‘Fitness Trails’ found in urban parks, in which city dwellers jog between ‘posts’ where they are directed to complete various specified exercises. Taken together, these activities are designed to address many of the key features of the life course perspective and, albeit to different degrees, engage all of Kolb’s (1984) learning modes: active, reflective, abstract and concrete. My hope is that you will take time out from reading the text of this book to consider these activities as they occur, working either individually or with a group of peers. A comment on each activity is included in the Appendix. I realise it is unlikely that many readers will work systematically through all of the Activity Trail exercises – lack of time and/or motivation seems probable to preclude this. However, I do put in a plea for giving the activities some thought and, even if you have not completed them in their entirety, referring to the commentaries in the Appendix, which include relevant points and discussion not covered in the main text.

Activity 1: Metaphors of the life course

At its most profound, the meaning of human life is carried in metaphor. For few of us are the metaphors we live by explicit; we do not usually have any conscious awareness of living out anything beyond what seems to be our literal experience. Yet ultimately, it is the metaphorical sense we make of our living that gives the journey its direction, its sense of progression or development, its turning points, changes and passages, the meaning of its beginning and its end.

(Salmon, 1985)

Metaphors of the life course can express our meaning more creatively and subtly than formal definitions. Appealing to imagination as well as reason, metaphors can illustrate, illuminate and embellish our understanding. The concepts of the life course and of life span development are large and unwieldy, but metaphor can clarify this muddle. Consider the metaphors below, and, if you wish, generate your own. What does each say about the nature and meaning of the human life course? Expand them and extend their implications to find images most in keeping with your own world-view.

• Think first of visual images of the life course – a ladder, an arc, a circle, a tapestry, a tangle of wool. … What does each suggest about the nature of the life course? In what ways do they differ? Which resonate most, and which least, with your experience?
• Now extend the metaphor beyond a simple shape. Think about images from the natural world – a plant, a river, or a rainbow, perhaps. Think, too, about patterns of time in nature – a day or a year. What characteristics does each of these metaphors confer on the life course? To what extent are they adequate? What are their limitations?
• As a contrast, now imagine life as a game of cards. We are dealt a hand of cards at birth, and subsequently may receive, or take, others. Perhaps we will discard or lose some of our cards, and, depending on the rules of the ‘game’, we will have a greater or lesser say in how our hand is played. What does this metaphor imply about the nature of the life course?
• Another metaphor might be the life course as a musical composition – will it be a simple, traditional tune; a rap; a symphony; a jazz improvisation …? In what ways do each of these say something different about the life course?
• Finally, invoke the image of the story as a metaphor for life. What events will be included? What will be ignored? Will the story be dramatic and eventful? Will it mirror a traditional tale – a fairy story, perhaps? If so, which one? What does thinking about life as a story suggest about the nature of human existence?

An evolving life structure

The life course can usefully be thought of as an evolving life structure – a term introduced by Daniel Levinson and his colleagues to describe the sequential ‘seasons’ of adulthood (Levinson et al., 1978; Levinson, 1986, 1996). It is a non-hierarchical image in that, whilst seasons follow each other in a fixed order, none is inherently better or worse than any other. Each is an equally important part of the whole.

The life structure is an ecological construct – a composite of the person, their physical, social and cultural context, and the relationship between the person and the immediate world of which they are a part. For counsellors this is a useful framework because it allows attention to be focused, as appropriate on the individual, on external factors, or on relationships. Thus Schlossberg and her colleagues (1995) distinguish four factors that influence a person’s ability to cope with change – self, situation, support and strategies.

• Self: what the person brings to the situation by virtue of who they are. This will include psychological attributes such as personality, values and level of maturity, and also personal and demographic factors such as socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, state of health, and – crucial in the present context – age or life stage.
• Situation: the particular characteristics of the circumstances in which clients find themselves. Significant factors will include the timing of the event, change or transition, what triggered it, the meaning of the event to the person experiencing it, and how much control they have over the situation.
• Support: the type and source of support available to help the person manage the change. Thus, the support may be emotional and/or practical, and may derive from intimate relationships, the family unit, networks of friends and colleagues, and the institutions and communities of which a person is a part.
• Strategies: what the person brings to the situation in terms of what they do – their coping skills and behaviours.

These different factors include both the person and the context in which the person is living. We are each a part of several immediate and interlocking settings – for example, home, workplace, school and, possibly, a counselling relationship. Each setting comprises a complex system of spoken and unspoken of demands, norms and expectations that both complement and contradict each other. Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1992) places these, and the relationships between them, in a still broader framework – a hierarchy of nested environments organised in terms of the directness of their impact on the individual. He distinguishes four levels within this hierarchy:

• the immediate settings of which the individual is a part;
• the network of settings and the interrelationships between them;
• the larger institutions of society – including education, health services and the mass media;
• the overarching values and patterns of the culture or subculture – including language, traditions and ideology.

Life structures include both the individual and the network of personal settings of which they are a part. Clarifying, managing and resolving conflicts between the demands of different settings is a frequent element in issues that clients bring to counselling. Societal institutions and cultural norms, in turn, impinge on these settings. The relationship is, however, two-way – with the individual influencing the environment as well as the environment influencing the individual.

Rather than being seen as a static framework, Bronfenbrenner’s model is best thought of as a dynamic system in which the various elements vary in nature and significance across time and culture, and also in the course of an individual’s life. Not only this, but people also change in ways that alter the meaning of the environment to them (Vgotsky, 1994). As we and our vantage point changes, environmental factors that had one meaning and played a certain role at a given age, may, over a period of time, begin to have a different meaning and to play a different role. This is what happens when parents renegotiate their relationship with their adolescent children as these children move towards adulthood. Young people who go away to college or university often experience the anomaly of having two places they call ‘home’. They may feel disloyal and guilty when, in conversation with their parents during the vacation, they inadvertently refer to their university flat as home. In relation to when they were younger, the parental home now has a changed meaning and plays a different, although not necessarily irrelevant, role in their life.

Kahn and Antonucci’s (1980; Antonucci, 1991) image of an interpersonal support convoy adds this element of change and development to Bronfenbrenner’s model of overlapping ecological systems. An interpersonal support convoy consists of a network of relationships that surrounds each of us and moves with us through life, both providing continuity in the exchange of support, and changing in structure over time. It can be represented pictorially as a series of concentric circles, with the focal person at the centre, and with the most consistently important convoy members in the inner circle and with the most transient and role-dependent members on the periphery. This arrangement is considered further in Chapter 4, where Activity 10: Interpersonal support convoys, involves completing a convoy picture for yourself and for one of your clients. Interpersonal support convoys incorporate the concept of movement and change in that people enter and leave the convoy and, within it, a convoy member may move either towards or away from its centre as their relationship with the focal person waxes or wanes in importance. To communicate this visually, the concentric rings should, perhaps, be replaced by concentric pipes.

The life structure is not static, but evolves over the course of a lifetime through a series of alternating structure-changing (or transitional) and structure-building (or consolidating) phases (Levinson et al., 1978; Levinson, 1986, 1990). Structure-changing phases are periods of upheaval and decision making, typically lasting up to five years, and involve terminating one life structure and initiating another. By way of contrast, structure-building phases are periods of consolidation rather than upheaval, typically lasting five to seven years, and involve implementing and building on changes and decisions made during the transitional period. The alternating pattern of structure-changing and structure-building phases can be seen as giving a basic rhythm to the human life course – one that Levinson sees as universal across time and culture. Within this overriding rhythm, each phase, be it structure-building or structure-changing, has its own distinctive character and is distinguished by a set of characteristic (and often contradictory) tasks.

A particular implication of Levinson’s theory for counselling practice is the recognition that clients’ needs may vary according to whether they are in a transitional or consolidating phase. Exploration and decision making are likely to be the primary focus during structure-changing periods, with implementation of plans, maintenance of effort and evaluation of outcome becoming more important during the structure-building periods. This sequence mirrors to a considerable extent the sequence of stages in Prochaska et al.’s (1992) transtheoretical model of change: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, implementation and maintenance.

The image of a life structure evolving through alternating structure-changing and structure-building phases helps to normalise the notion of ‘seasonal’ change during adulthood. It challenges people’s often implicit assumption that adulthood is a plateau reached at the end of adolescence; an assumption that can lead to distress when disproved – ‘If only I had made better decisions 5, 10, 15 years ago I would not be in this mess now’. The sequence also provides a framework for locating the study of particular life events or turning points, so that they are not seen as isolated states or experiences. ‘The life course approach’, wrote Haraven and Adams back in 1982, ‘… views life transitions and changes in work status and family relations as life processes, rather than an isolated state or segment of human experience. … Rather than viewing any stage of life, such as childhood, youth and old age, or any age group in isolation, it is concerned with an understanding of the place of that stage in an entire life continuum’ (p. xiii).

A ‘seasonal’ view of stages facilitates the valuing of each life stage for itself, rather than primarily a prelude to later, more ‘advanced’ levels of functioning. Such a position is consistent with Crompton’s (1992) advocacy for ‘childist’ counselling, wherein counsellors work to enable troubled children ‘to recognize and embrace their own reality, the inwardness which balances being and growth, stability and change’ (p. 12). Crompton implicitly places childhood and the counselling of children in a life span perspective:

A childist approach to counselling requires respect for the idea of childhood as well as for every individual child. If feminism involves the study of the feminine in all aspects of culture – for example, religion, politics, dress, art, literature, power, oppression – childism would involve equivalent study about childhood. … A childist counsellor would begin with the idea of a child of whatever age being a complete person rather than an immature version of the adult s/he would become. An acorn is not an immature oak tree; an acorn is perfectly an acorn. It contains everything necessary for growth into an oak tree but neither acorn nor tree contains greater or lesser value and virtue. Each is entire unto itself, both are of use to other forms of life. (p. 5, emphasis added)

Life stage

Life stage determines, at least to some extent, the issues that we face and that we might bring to counselling. It also influences how we experience events that could occur at any age – the death of a parent will have many different implications depending on whether we are 2 years old, 15, 40 or 65. The meaning we give to our own and other people’s behaviour is filtered through an awareness of age, expectations and norms:

At the age of 48 Maria was concerned about a range of things in her life that were ‘not as they should be’. Her husband, two years her junior, had recently purchased a high-powered motor bike and was, in her words, ‘...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• ‘Activity Trail’ Exercises
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Composing a life
• 2 Developmental tasks and themes
• 3 Counselling across the life course
• 4 Transitions and turning points
• 5 Life stories
• 6 Taking a life course perspective
• Appendix: commentaries on the Activity Trail exercises
• References
• Index