demic tradition that Mark Savickas developed his career-style assessment (1989). His ap-
proach to careers counselling makes use of Adlerian concepts such as lifestyle and career
style, encouragement and the use of private logic that emanates from childhood experience
(Scharf, 1997, p.290). Savickas’s structured approach consists of two phases - assessment
and counselling. The assessment phase consists of a careers interview which focuses on
gathering information about lifestyle issues. Each question is focused and provides particu-
lar clues about the client’s life goals. They include role models, books, magazines, leisure
activities, school subjects, mottoes, ambitions and decisions. After the initial assessment
interview, three more sessions are required. The first is to discuss career style and path,
decision-making difficulties and interests; the second focuses on developing a list of oc-
cupations for further exploration and the third focuses on any difficulties that the individual
may be having in making a choice. Throughout the process, there is an emphasis on pre-
senting observations that the practitioner has made about the client (Scharf, 1997, p.290).
3. Conclusion
Watkins and Savickas (1990) argue that psychodynamic theories represent a subjective ap-
proach to careers guidance. ‘The real value of psychodynamic career counseling is to com-
plement the objective perspective with the subjective perspective’ (p.101). Bordin (1994)
considers that a real strength of this approach is to provide the perspective of the family
as a system which provides a framework for understanding the transmission of social influ-
ences (p.60). However, psychodynamic approaches to careers have almost totally ignored
the importance of social variables (Brown, 1990, p.353), and remain inaccessible to most
practitioners. These approaches have not been incorporated generally into careers guid-
ance in the UK, though certain ideas and concepts have been used to enhance and inform
our approaches to guidance, such as the influence of role models. Brown (1990) considers
that the ‘present status of psychoanalytical thinking is that it has relatively few supporters’
(p.354).
References
Bordin, E.S. (1994) ‘Intrinsic motivation and the active self: convergence from a psychody-
namic perspective, in Savickas, M.L. & Lent, R.L. (Eds) Convergence in Career Develop-
ment Theories, Palo Alto, California, CPP Books, pp53-61.
Brown, D. (1990) ‘Summary, comparison & critique of the major theories’, in Brown, D.,
Brooks, L. & Associates (Eds), Career Choice & Development, San Francisco, Jossey
Bass, pp338-363.
Kidd, J.M., Killeen, J., Jarvis, J. & Offer, M. (1994) ‘Is guidance an applied science?: the role