Counseling
Constructivist career counseling engages clients in autobiographical
reasoning that articulates their vocational interests as a psychosocial
link between self and society (Savickas, 1999). It seeks to write and
rewrite a career story that relates vocational self-concepts to work
roles. The career narrative should explain how clients can use occu-
pations to become more complete (Savickas, 1993b). As stated ear-
lier, this means helping clients fit work into their lives rather than
fitting people into occupations. In general, constructivist career
counseling helps clients construct and manage their careers so that
they may experience self-fulfillment at work and contribute to the
welfare of the community. In particular, constructivist career coun-
seling fosters self-concept clarification and implementation, along
with handling the developmental tasks. It helps clients articulate
and integrate their vocational self-concepts and career themes, clar-
ify and validate their vocational identities, relate their preferences
to the opportunity structure, and increase their realism in making
educational and vocational choices. Relative to handling the encoun-
tered and anticipated vocational development tasks, constructivist
career counseling helps clients form adaptive attitudes, beliefs, and
competencies.
The narrative paradigm for constructivist career counseling helps
clients to author self-enhancing and generative career autobiogra-
phies, especially vocational stories that allow them to see clearly what
is at stake, what the alternative choices are, and what decision needs
to be made (Savickas, 1992). Connecting today’s indecision to yes-
terday’s experiences and tomorrow’s possibilities serves to clarify
meaning, allow comprehension, and enhance the ability to choose.
This central task of enhancing narratability requires that counselors
help clients rewrite and edit their career narratives in a way that
invests work with personal meaning and charts a future course. When
discussing a career transition, the counselor helps clients to personal-
ize their experience of discontinuity by fitting the problem into the
larger pattern of meaning. This narrative shaping of transitional dis-
192 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT