some students’ indecision problems are wrapped in their role as
children because they cannot make a choice for fear of disap-
pointing a parent. More often than not, career clients seek coun-
seling when they are changing elements in their life structure or
rearranging the pattern of roles. During such a transition, individ-
uals redesign their lives as they adopt new roles, drop outdated
roles, and modify continuing roles. Although career counseling is
a major intervention in its own right, it should be embedded in the
larger intervention of life planning so that it fully responds to the
particulars of a client’s concerns and circumstances (Brown, 1988;
Hansen, 1997; Savickas, 1991a). Rather than automatically priv-
ileging the work role in promoting “career development,” coun-
selors must concentrate on fostering “human development through
work and relationships” (Richardson, 1999).
Vocational Self-Concepts
Having discussed social context and life roles, I turn now to the “per-
son” half of the person-environment transaction. Propositions 4–7
deal with vocational behavior from an objective perspective. By
objectiveI mean the consensus, shared by members of a society, that
(1) defines an occupation’s requirements, routines, and rewards, (2)
judges an individual’s abilities and interests, and (3) matches people
to positions. This rational paradigm (Parsons, 1909) for guiding peo-
ple to fitting occupations has been one of vocational psychology’s
most significant contributions to the human sciences. To save space,
I do not discuss these propositions herein but refer readers to other
theories that concentrate on these ideas, such as the preeminent
statements of person-environment psychology devised by Holland
(1997) and by Lofquist and Dawis (1991).
Here I concentrate on the phenomenological perspective of
vocational self-concepts in propositions 8–10 of career construction
theory. In concentrating on the development and implementation
of vocational self-concepts, these propositions provide a subjective,
personal, and ideographic framework for comprehending career
160 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT