with E, it would also be important to determine who the other par-
ticipants in these processes are and how their goals interact with E’s
goals. Constructing a narrative about having an occupation would
also be helpful for identifying the goals that E is seeking to fulfill
through it, as well as those goals’ relation to other projects.
The Case of K
The most significant questions in the case of K are why he is pre-
senting himself for counseling and what he expects from it. These
are addressed to a limited extent in the statement, “K admits that
he has very little information about careers at this time and ex-
pressed an interest in knowing more about technology careers and
architecture.” K’s apparent lack of specificity in articulating the
goals for counseling seems to reflect a significant lack of action,
projects, and career in some areas of his life. Although K does not
manifest psychopathology, the lack of agency and effective func-
tioning in relation to some of the important contexts in which he
lives may signal current and future psychological adjustment issues.
One explicit theme is skateboarding and K’s desire to be a skate-
boarder. This provides a link between the past and the future, as he
constructs it. Skateboarding is something that K likes, does, and
reads about. It is an occupational daydream. He wants to pattern his
life after professional skateboarders. Skateboarding can be tenta-
tively proposed as a current project. We may also think of skate-
boarding as a careerin K’s construction. In this sense, career does
not necessarily refer to an occupation. Nevertheless, skateboarding
is the major theme that ties many of his actions together. It is inter-
esting to note that the assessment data contain relatively little on
his ability or self-efficacy ratings on skateboarding or on the physi-
cal ability associated with it.
K’s skateboarding project may also provide some information
about his current malaise and his reasons for seeking counseling.
Notwithstanding his interest in this field, K may be experiencing
some incongruence between this project and other projects in which
A CONTEXTUALIST EXPLANATION OF CAREER 241