should look to their clients’ everyday experiences and constructs in
formulating their own understanding and practice of counseling. The
desire of practitioners to meet their clients on equal terms and the
knowledge that their own activity as counselors, as well as their cli-
ents’ activity, is intentional focuses on the need for an explanation of
goal-directed, intentional action that addresses the counselor’s and
client’s activity alike. The career counselor is also confronted by a
broad range of client behavior, from the cognitive-adaptive regula-
tion of a specific action to long-term life planning. For example, a
teacher’s long-term career interests and goals may be jeopardized by
a short-term process such as stage fright. Similarly, performing a rela-
tively short-term action, such as filling out a job application, may be
at risk because of a long-term experience of anxiety in situations
where paper credentials are scrutinized. Although the source of nei-
ther the stage fright nor the anxiety needs to be identified to illustrate
the difference between long term and short term, both types of issues
fall within the purview of career counseling. A helpful explanation
must include and integrate them.
Counseling is constructed in the language of goal-directed
action. Feltham and Dryden (1993) note that all counseling is im-
plicitly goal-directed; the broadest possible goals are, for example,
to be happy or to understand oneself better. Egan (1998) has enun-
ciated one of the clearest models, in which he refers to goals as a
consequence of counseling. What is added here is the conception
of goals as part of the ongoing process of counseling itself, embed-
ded in what the counselor and client are doing together.
Working with Interpretation and Narrative
Counseling involves interpersonal communication between coun-
selor and client in which interpretation has a central role. Interpre-
tationrefers specifically to a constructionist sense making of one’s
experiences and goals (for example, Sexton & Griffin, 1997). This
meaning-making process applies equally to the long-term career
A CONTEXTUALIST EXPLANATION OF CAREER 231