Career Counseling

Holism, Diversity, and Strengths

Norman C. Gysbers, Mary J. Heppner, Joseph A. Johnston

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781119026440
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

"This book establishes a new standard. The focus on 'holism, diversity, and strengths' sets a fresh direction for the field that will inspire today's counselors. Distinct from other texts both in terms of style and ease of use, Career Counseling provides a practical model that connects theory, practice, and resources in hopeful and affirming ways, while offering readers new skills and insights."

— Rich Feller, PhD
University Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Colorado State University

Past President, National Career Development Association

"Gysbers, Heppner, and Johnston have continued their excellent contributions to the field with this 4th edition. Their approach is highly practical for counselors in helping diverse clients prepare for and manage the changing workplace and economy. I enthusiastically recommend this book as a must-have resource for counseling professionals and as a textbook for graduate counseling programs."

—Kenneth F. Hughey, PhD

Kansas State University

"We invite all students, professionals, and researchers to read this volume to enrich their practice, research, and the values by which they should be inspired to persist in being active agents of change in the world."

—Laura Nota, PhD, and the Larios Vocational Psychology Team

University of Padova, Italy

The latest edition of this bestseller will help both counselors-in-training and experienced clinicians update and expand their existing knowledge and skills in career counseling with clients of all ages and circumstances. Significant attention is placed on expanding the career options and empowering the life choices of women; men; racial and ethnic minorities; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clients; clients from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds; and individuals with disabilities. Additional topics discussed include traditional and postmodern career theories and approaches, forming a productive alliance with the client, effective use of assessment inventories and instruments, helping clients respond to changes in the workplace and family life, working with resistant clients, developing client action plans, and bringing closure to the counseling process. A new chapter titled "Using Social Media in Career Counseling" rounds out this exceptional book.

*Requests for digital versions from ACA can be found on www.wiley.com. *To purchase print copies, please visit the ACA website.

*Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to [email protected].

Part One
Career Counseling in the 21st Century
Evolving Contexts, Challenges, and Concepts

Chapter 1
Career Counseling: A Life Career Development Perspective

Careers are person-specific and created by the choices we make throughout our lives. Careers emerge from the constant interplay between the person and the environment. They include activities engaged in prior to entering the workforce and after formal activity as a worker has been completed. Careers encompass the total constellation of life roles that we play. Thus, managing our careers effectively also involves integrating the roles of life effectively. In a very real sense, careers are the manifestations of our attempts at making sense out of our life experiences. The career development process is, in essence, a spiritual journey reflecting our choices concerning how we will spend our time on Earth.

—Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2005, p. 30

The theory and research base of career development and the practice of career counseling has evolved and changed as the 21st century has continued to unfold. Modern normative, science-based theories such as Holland’s theory of vocational personalities and work environments continue to be useful in guiding the practice of career counseling (R. W. Lent, 2013). At the same time, there has been “a proliferation of career counselling approaches underpinned by postmodern and constructivist philosophies” (McMahon, Watson, Chetty, & Hoelson, 2012, p. 127).

The combination of modern theories and postmodern theories is stimulating a reexamination of the nature and structure of career development and the career counseling practices used to facilitate it. This reexamination is also stimulating new ways of gathering client information as career counseling unfolds. Just as important, it is giving us new ways to think about and develop hypotheses concerning client information and behavior. It is opening up new ways to apply these hypotheses to the selection of interventions used to assist clients in resolving their problems and achieving their goals.

To set the stage for the rest of the book, the first part of Chapter 1 examines the nature and structure of career counseling in light of the changes occurring in career development theory building. This discussion is presented to provide a perspective and an organizer for the career counseling interventions that are described in the chapters that follow. Then, in the second part of Chapter 1, a holistic view of career development, called life career development, is described to provide a conceptual foundation and point of departure for career counseling with clients of all ages and circumstances. The chapter closes with a discussion of competencies for counselors who do career counseling. The Career Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale (O’Brien & Heppner, 1995) is presented and described.

Career Counseling

What is career counseling? Is it different from other forms of counseling? Is it the same? Is there overlap? These questions are being asked with increasing frequency today as attempts are being made to clarify this form of counseling (Amundson, Harris-Bowlsbey, & Niles, 2009; Capuzzi & Stauffer, 2012; Savickas, 2011). Central to the ongoing discussion about career counseling are two issues. First is the issue of the nature of career counseling. What are its intrinsic characteristics and qualities? Are psychological processes involved? Second is the issue of structure. Does career counseling have structure? If so, what is the configuration, sequence, and interrelationships of the phases and subphases involved?

The Nature of Career Counseling

“Historically, career and vocational counseling have served as the cornerstones upon which the counseling profession was built” (Dorn, 1992, p. 176). Unfortunately, along the path of history, career counseling became stereotyped. In many people’s minds it became time limited, it was devoid of psychological processes, and it focused on outcomes and methods (Osipow, 1982). Swanson (1995), paraphrasing the work of Manuele-Adkins, underscored this point:

Manuele-Adkins (1992) described elements of a stereotypic view of career counseling that discredit its psychological component and affect the quality and delivery of career counseling services. In this stereotypic view, career counseling is a rational process, with an emphasis on information-giving, testing, and computer-based systems; it is short-term, thus limiting the range of possible intervention strategies and obscuring psychological processes such as indecision; and it is different from personal counseling, thus lowering the perceived value of career counseling and increasing a false separation between work and nonwork. (p. 222)

Young and Domene (2012) added to this historical debate by stating there is still a disconnect “between career counseling and counseling for other areas of life, such as family, emotional difficulties and relationship issues” (p. 16). They pointed out that unfortunately practitioners in career counseling and counseling even have different professional identities, practices, and professional associations, which further adds to the separation. As a result, they noted, there is often failure to connect with each other and use each other’s professional literature.

This separation has led some individuals to see counselors who do career counseling as active and directive because they use qualitative and quantitative assessments and information. Counselors who do personal–emotional counseling, in contrast, are seen by others as facilitative and exploratory because they focus on psychological processes, that is, on client–counselor interactions (Imbimbo, 1994). This dichotomy of views has led to the classic stereotype of career counseling as “three interviews and a cloud of dust” (Crites, 1981, pp. 49–52). It is not surprising, therefore, that career counseling does not fare well in the eyes of practitioners when compared to personal–emotional counseling, given the classic stereotype.

In addition, we believe this dichotomy has caused the public to form spurious beliefs and ideas about the nature of career counseling. Amundson et al. (2009) labeled these spurious beliefs and ideas as career counseling myths:

1. Career counselors have at their disposal standardized assessments that can be used to tell people which occupation they should choose.
2. Work role decisions can be made in isolation from other life roles.
3. Career counseling does not address “personal” issues.
4. Career counselors do not need extensive counseling expertise to do their work competently.
5. Career counseling does not address the client’s context and culture.
6. Career counseling is required only when a career decision must be made.
7. Career counseling ends when a career decision is made. (p. 5)

Contrary to the classic stereotype, we believe that career counseling belongs in the general class of counseling because it has the same intrinsic characteristics and qualities that all forms of counseling possess. It differs from the rest of the class, however, because presenting problems often focus on work and career issues, and quantitative and qualitative assessment procedures and information are used more frequently. Swanson (1995) suggested this characterization of career counseling when she defined it as “an ongoing, face-to-face interaction between counselor and client, with the primary focus on work- or career-related issues; the interaction is psychological in nature, with the relationship between counselor and client serving an important function” (p. 245).

As those of you who are practicing counselors know, client presenting problems often are only a beginning point, and as counseling unfolds, other problems emerge. Career issues frequently become personal–emotional issues and family issues, and then career issues again (Andersen & Vandehey, 2012). Psychological distress is often present (Multon, Heppner, Gysbers, Zook, & Ellis-Kalton, 2001). Thoughts, emotions, and feelings are all involved. As Kidd (2004) pointed out, “We . . . need to know more about how the expression of emotion affects career development” (p. 443). Hartung (2011a) supported Kidd’s point by stating,

Emotion holds promise for providing answers to questions about the why of vocational behavior. It seems time to examine emotion’s role in career theory and practice more broadly and specifically in fostering goal directedness, shaping purpose, constructing meaning, increasing narratability, and promoting intentionality in life-career design. (p. 302)

The stereotyped division of counseling into the separate classes of personal–emotional and career is artificial and cannot stand in practice because many clients are dealing with multiple personal–emotional and career problems simultaneously, many of them connected and intertwined (R. E. Lent & Brown, 2013). This is not a new idea. Years ago, Super (1957) said, “The distinction between vocational and personal counseling seems artificial, and the stressing of one at the expense of the other seems uncalled for” (p. 196). More recently, Flores (2007) stated, “Both the personal and career life spheres are understood to occur concurrently and to operate interdependently with one another” (pp. 3–4). As Amundson (1998) suggested, “Most people come to counseling with life problems that do not fall neatly into the categories of career or personal: life just does not define itself that neatly” (p. 16).

If career counseling belongs to the same class as other forms of counseling, then why do we use the term career counseling at all? We advocate the use of the term partly because of history. As stated earlier, the use of the word vocational, now career, is part of our heritage.

History alone, however, is not a sufficient reason to continue to use the term career counseling. There is another reason—the need to focus attention on client problems dealing with work and career issues that require theoretical conceptions and interventions originating from career developme...