In Career Counseling Over Time, Mark L. Savickas demonstrates this narrative approach to vocational counseling. This approach, which is based on career construction theory, focuses on how a client creates the meaning of his or her life. Using a series of simple questions designed to get clients to tell stories about themselves, the therapist highlights themes in these stories that illuminate what each client values as meaningful. In the final session, the therapist and client work together to apply these values and personality traits in a search for a fulfilling career paths.
In these two three-session sets, Dr. Savickas works with two men in their 20s. The first client, although nearly finished with a degree in computer science, has many other interests and is unsure about what his life path should be. The second client, a former Marine working as a carpenter, would like to find a type of work more compatible with his skills.
Each set of three sessions shows a full course of career counseling, from assessment through exploration and resolution, making this DVD an essential introduction to this approach.
Many vocational counselors are innovating their practices by shifting concentration from fostering career development to fostering development through work and relationships. This shift in practice has been prompted by changes in the social organization of work and occupations.
To respond to these changes, some counselors have turned to narrative counseling models and methods because this approach emphasizes life planning rather than occupational choice. Looking at lives as novels being written focuses attention on the themes that activate and characterize individuals in both the work and partnership/family domains.
From this narrative perspective, vocational interests are solutions to problems that people have experienced and work is an opportunity to actively master what has been passively suffered. This narrative approach to career counseling enables clients to fit work into their lives, rather than fit themselves to jobs. Thus, personal validation replaces occupational congruence as the goal of counseling.
This DVD discusses and demonstrates practical techniques for using stories and articulating life themes to foster career decision making and work adjustment. Viewers will learn how to integrate these techniques into their ongoing practice and may even use the techniques to better understand why they became psychologists and how the occupation of psychotherapist allows them to advance their own life stories.
Mark L. Savickas, PhD, is professor and chair in the Behavioral Sciences Department at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and adjunct professor of counselor education at Kent State University. His 80 articles, 25 book chapters, and 500 presentations to professional groups have dealt with vocational behavior and career counseling.
He is a member of the board of directors for the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance and president-elect of the Counseling Psychology Division of the International Association of Applied Psychology.
He has served as editor for the Career Development Quarterly (1991–1998) and is currently editor for the Journal of Vocational Behavior. He also serves on editorial boards for the Journal of Counseling Psychology, Journal of Career Assessment, International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, Australian Journal of Career Development, the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, L'Orientation Scolaire et Professionnelle (France), and the Educational Research Journal (Hong Kong). He edited Convergence in Career Development Theories (1994, with R. Lent), Handbook of Career Counseling Theory and Practice (1996, with B. Walsh), Vocational Interests (1999, with A. Spokane), and Handbook of Vocational Psychology (2005, with B. Walsh).
In 1994, he received the John L. Holland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Career and Personality Research from the Society of Counseling Psychology (Division 17) of the American Psychological Association. In 1996, he received the Eminent Career Award from the National Career Development Association. In 2009, the University of Lisbon in Portugal distinguished him with a Doutor, Honoris Causa.
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