one’s life partner, residence, medical intervention – reunite interests, energies, and
perspectives that are essential to one’s general welfare.
Counsellors must be aware of the personality resources activated in decision-making, the
specific tendencies of certain categories of people and in certain activity fields, and be
capable of signalling their effects on the individual and society. Pre-eminent in this
exercise are the alternatives identifies at an individual level, the system of values
belonging to the person making the decision, and their availability to make the most of
the given conditions.
In the specialized literature, Brown (1990) and others identify normative models
(prescriptive – how decisions should be made) and descriptive models (heuristic – how
decisions are actually made).
A normative decision making model is the rational model. It involves the following
stages:
- gathering information on the subject matter from various sources and through
various channels (reading, talking to competent people, interviews with
beneficiaries); - information processing or analysis through reflection, use of information in
work contexts, commenting upon it. Activities in this stage contribute to
clarifying and understanding the range of existing possibilities on the basis of
criteria (objective and/or subjective) for judging the advantages and
disadvantages, and comparing alternatives; - choice, consisting in engaging the person in action related to a certain option,
considered at a given time as having the most favourable consequences; - implementation, as the final moment of a decision.
The decision may be an internal action (e.g. “I have decided not to regret my old job
anymore.”) or external action (e.g. “I have decided to ask for letters of recommendation
from my previous employers.”).
The decision rarely follows a rational path and is never linear. In fact it is “hidden,
elusive, unsystematic and occasionally irrational” (Egan, 1998, apud Cossier, Schwenk,
1990; Etzioni, 1989; Stroh, Miller, 1993; Gati, Krausz, Osipow, 1996), since it integrates
feelings, deep emotions, active values, interests, one’s perception of how things work at
the social level.