Constructing a life that works: part 2, an approach to practice

Career Development Quarterly, Sept, 2004 by Cathy Campbell, Michael Ungar

The 1st article (C. Campbell & M. Ungar, 2004) of this 2-part exploration of postmodern approaches to family therapy and narrative approaches to career counseling explored the differences between traditional trait and factor counseling models and postmodern approaches using life narratives and social constructionism. In this 2nd article, the authors discuss 7 aspects of their practice as postmodern career counselors that ask clients to (a) know what you want, (b) know what you have, (c) know what you hear, (d) know what constrains you, (e) map your preferred story, (f) grow into your story, and (g) grow out of your story. Several case studies demonstrate the applicability of these theories to practice.

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In Part 1 (Campbell & Ungar, 2004) of these two articles, we examined the differences between trait and factor models of career counseling and postmodern approaches. Our goal has been to outline a social constructionist approach that focuses on life narratives and constructions of identity. A social constructionist approach emphasizes that the way individuals experience their world depends on how they construct meaning for events in their lives through the language available to them to describe their experiences. Both the theoretical and applied aspects of these two articles grow out of our experiences in both the career and vocational counseling and marriage and family therapy fields. In the first article, we examined the differences between traditional trait and factor models of career counseling and postmodern approaches that use life narratives and social constructionism. As career counselors and marriage and family therapists, our approach to career development brings together the extensive literature on postmodernism in the field of family therapy with emerging narrative approaches to career counseling. Our purpose in this second article is to discuss in detail practical applications of our approach to postmodern career counseling. In the field of career counseling, translating postmodern theory into practice has been challenging. In this article, we hope to provide a practical application of material that at times can seem overly theoretical and abstract.

Specifically, we discuss a model that focuses on helping clients to articulate their preferred futures rather than answering the question that is traditionally explored in career counseling: "Who am I?" This question assumes that the self exists as an essential aspect of the individual, which can be revealed through the exploration of interests, skills, aptitudes, values, and personal styles. A fundamentally different question that a postmodern approach seeks to explore is, "What is my preferred future?" This question focuses attention on the evolving story line the client tells about him- or herself and what he or she sees as the next chapter in the story.

This attention to narrative has been discussed by others in the career development field as well. Mark Savickas (1993) noted that a career can be viewed as a story and that career counseling can be "conceptualized as a process of storying and restorying a client's vocational experience" (p. 213). Similarly, Larry Cochran (1997) characterized a career decision as the adoption of a role in a narrative, and Vance Peavy (1996) viewed a person's self-identity as an issue of life storying. According to Peavy, the problems that clients present to career counselors are primarily related to stories that have gone astray.

It is these stories, or narratives, that give an illusion of a fixed personhood. There is no essential self to be discovered--just a story that is revealed and negotiated with others. The self does not have a trait base but rather a narrative base. One's sense of "who one is" is best understood through the stories one tells (Peavy, 1996). From a postmodern perspective, the scaffolding of individuals' preferred futures is formed by the stories they and others tell about their past and present. As Cochran (1997) wrote,

     Construction of a narrative of the future is an attempt to weave
     together, in a whole composition, the person's most fundamental
     motives, outstanding strengths, and salient interests and values.
     The central desires aroused in the past are to be fulfilled in the
     future. (p. 84)

Consistent with this postmodern perspective, the traits and factors that clients perceive they have are viewed as the building blocks of their preferred futures. Although they are still important information the client may want to know, traits and factors are decentered from the conversation in a postmodern approach to career counseling in favor of the client's own indigenous way of understanding what he or she wants. Clients are encouraged to weave whatever insight is gained from discussions of traits and factors into their dominant story line. However, it is this story line that is emphasized, not its component parts. As with Lego blocks, many different futures can be constructed from the same pieces. An inventory of traits and factors may contribute to the construction of vastly different stories. Alternately, a preferred future can be broken into its component parts as long as the emphasis remains on the cohesive whole. A client who is caught in the "death grip" of certainty that there is only one preferred occupation can be encouraged to see his or her choice as embedded inside a much larger and more diverse narrative. This provides the flexibility to consider different options.