outer world. The overriding goal toward which career construction
moves is a situation in which the occupational role validates the
individual’s self-concept, or as Super states, “The occupation thus
makes possible the playing of a role appropriate to the self-concept”
(1963, p. 1). Ideally, an occupational role enables an individual to
cooperate with and contribute to the community in ways that both
substantiate and confirm that individual’s self-concept. In this man-
ner, an occupational role enables an individual to become the per-
son he or she wants to be, and, in fact, likes.
Developmental Tasks in Career Construction
The previous sections have introduced the two variables that inter-
act to produce careers, namely, self and society. The essence of con-
structing careers lies in recursive transactions between vocational
self-concept and work role—a process prompted by community
expectations about how life should be lived. As an individual
extends the self into the community through enacting work roles,
there must be effective transactional adaptation for both to flour-
ish. The vocational self-concept, usually in the form of integrative
and self-defining narratives, guides adaptation by negotiating cul-
tural opportunities and constraints. Each transaction should both
strengthen the group and improve the individual’s adaptive fitness.
In pursuit of these twin goals, the transactional adaptations required
to mesh vocational self-concept and work role produce vocational
development.
The never-ending process of transactional adaptation and
career construction evolve in probabilistic ways. These alternative
pathways are socially constructed, conditioned by local situations,
and contingent on time, place, and socioeconomic status. In the
United States during the second half of the twentieth century, the
approach Super (1957) took to recounting the social tasks of voca-
tional development concentrated on one main path through life.
His recital of career stages highlights changes in goals across five
periods of life as an individual moves from one stable condition to
166 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT