Positive Psychology: a Movement to Reintegrate Career Counselling Within Counselling Psychology? Peter J

CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Repository@Napier Theoretical Paper Positive psychology: A movement to reintegrate career counselling within counselling psychology? Peter J. Robertson Content & Focus: In the UK career counselling has tended to evolve separately from the counselling psychology profession. Elsewhere, notably in North America, counselling psychology does embrace career issues. This paper explores the contested boundaries between career and therapeutic work, and identifies positive psychology as a movement that transcends the divide. There is potential for positive psychology to reintegrate a career focus into counselling psychology. Conclusions: Although it does not provide a general theory of career choice and development, positive psychology has resonance with career counselling. It provides a rigorous conceptual and empirical foundation linking vocation to wellbeing. An evidence-based career counselling is beginning to emerge. Positive psychology presents a challenge to the current boundaries of the UK counselling psychology profession by demanding a holistic view of well-being that encompasses work and career. Keywords: positive psychology; career counselling; counselling psychology; identity OME of the earliest applications of in Britain. In part, this can be explained professional psychology in the UK to by the dividing lines between the Shelp individuals facing life challenges counselling and occupational subdisciplines were focused on issues of vocational choice. of psychology, with the latter laying claim Cyril Burt pioneered this work in 1913, and to the work domain. The British Psycholog- it was developed during the interwar period ical Society’s Division of Occupational by the National Institute for Industrial Psychology lists career development as one Psychology (Peck, 2004). More than a of its areas of activity (BPS, n.d.). More generation ago, Holdsworth (1982) demon- importantly, career guidance in the UK is strated that the application of psychology to distinctive in that it developed from state issues of career choice and development was bureaucracies supporting young people in well established. Similarly, some of the the transition from education to work (Peck, earliest applications of counselling in the 2004). As Jayasinghe (2001) points out, the UK were in the context of educational and UK government policy in this sector has vocational guidance (Dawis, 1968). In the been at best ambivalent, and occasionally UK, career counselling features as a context hostile to the application of career coun- for practice in textbooks on counselling and selling within education and employment psychotherapy (e.g. Bailey, 1997; Bimrose, settings. Counselling psychology, occupa- 2000) and in texts focused specifically on tional psychology and career guidance have counselling psychology (Nelson-Jones, 1982; emerged as three separate professional Kidd, 2003). It also merits its own specialist training structures in Britain. texts (e.g. Kidd, 2006; Nathan & Hill, 2006). This position is not universal. In some There remains a substantive divide countries, most notably in North America, the between therapeutic and career counselling professions seem comfortable with a more 26 Counselling Psychology Review, Vol. 30, No. 3, September 2015 Positive psychology: A movement to reintegrate career counselling fluid boundary between career and thera- ‘Career intervention is simply a form of psycho- peutic counselling. In Canada, involvement in logical intervention designed to affect voca- career development is a defining role for tionally related feelings, attitudes, cognitions, counselling psychologists (Lalande, 2004). In and behaviours. Thus, it is a form of the US, counselling psychology’s deep roots in psychotherapy and should be viewed as a career development establishes its identity as method of behaviour change and tied to clearly distinct from that of clinical psychology psychotherapy theory.’ (Rounds & Tinsley, (Neimeyer et al., 2011). The Society for Voca- 1984, pp.138–139) tional Psychology is a subsystem of the Amer- ican Psychological Association Division 17: It has been suggested that career issues raised Society of Counseling Psychology. The term by clients are perceived to be of lower status ‘vocational psychology’ encompasses career by therapeutic counsellors, who avoid counselling and the psychology of career dealing with them (e.g. Spengler, Blustein & choice and development. It features promi- Strohmer, 1990). The converse suggestion is nently in American counselling psychology that career counsellors prefer brief contact texts (e.g. Brown & Lent, 2008), and vocation- with clients and avoid more personal or ally themed articles are commonly found in emotional issues (e.g. Burlew, 1996). Yet the Journal of Counseling Psychology and Coun- there is evidence that the concerns raised by selling Psychology Quarterly. career counselling clients encompass Career counselling has drawn on a diverse personal issues and heightened emotions, range of theoretical approaches derived from and are broadly similar to the presenting counselling psychology, including person concerns in general counselling (e.g. Niles, centred and psychodynamic approaches Anderson & Cover, 2000; Fouad et al., 2006). (Kidd, 2006), systems theory (Patton & Problems from career and personal domains McMahon, 1999), motivational interviewing of life overlap and interact with reciprocal (Young & Stoltz, 2013), cognitive behavioural effects (e.g. Hinkelman & Luzzo, 2007; Lenz counselling (Sheward & Branch, 2012), and et al., 2010). Zunker (2008) stresses that wider interpretive movements including post- mental health problems are pervasive and modernism (Savickas, 1993) and construc- affect every domain of life, and that work is tivism (Reid, 2006). central to identity and biography. Numerous This paper begins by exploring the rela- case studies demonstrate the entanglement tionship between career counselling and of career with other life issues, together with counselling psychology, before arguing that narratives describing how careers counselling the positive psychology movement has the resolved them (e.g. Burlew, 1996; Lenz et al., potential to erode the boundary between 2010; Pope, Cheng & Leong, 1998). them. An outline is provided of the concepts The arguments need not be accepted from positive psychology that shed light on uncritically. Case study accounts are anec- the potential of career as an arena to build dotal. Also, the debate is one-sided, with most enduring wellbeing. The emerging evidence of the contributions coming from vocational base is briefly discussed, and finally, a social psychologists arguing for the integration of justice perspective is introduced. career and therapeutic counselling. Nonethe- less the case is persuasively made that in spite Exploring the split between career of entanglement between career and and therapeutic counselling personal/therapeutic issues there remains a Even within the counselling psychology split in practice. For Hackett (1993) this is a profession in the US, career counsellors false dichotomy; for Blustein (2006) an arte- complain at a divide between the vocational fact of language. Richardson (1996) attributes and the therapeutic, with some protesting the divide to three ‘false splits’ within the their equivalence: discipline of psychology: Counselling Psychology Review, Vol. 30, No. 3, September 2015 27 Peter J. Robertson ■ A split between the normal and the example of the new realisation of the rele- pathological. vance of positive psychology to careers is a ■ A split between the vocational and other special issue of the Journal of Career Assessment aspects of self and identity. (edited by Walsh, 2008). Here we can find ■ A split between the public and the cogent arguments for taking a wellbeing private domains. focus, and an argument that vocational psychology already contains within it a valu- Introducing positive psychology at the able health-related body of knowledge: intersection of career counselling and counselling psychology ‘Although a scant literature has specifically Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) addressed the relevance of SWB [subjective describe positive psychology as a move- wellbeing] for career theory and practice, ment that seeks to redress the imbalance particularly within an assessment context, created by a dominant pathology-oriented a vast vocational psychology literature has approach to the discipline of psychology. dealt with highly related constructs of work As such it directly addresses the first of values, work adjustment, and job satisfac- Richardson’s splits. The focus of positive tion.’ (Hartung & Taber, 2008) psychologists is promotion of wellbeing for the whole population, which is conceptu- Application of counselling psychology for alised as on a mental health continuum mainstream populations in work or rather than divided between clinical and educational settings requires culturally non-clinical groups (Huppert, 2004). It appropriate models, so some clinical-style also addresses the second and third splits. psychotherapies may offer an uncomfortable Rather than focus on experiences of fit. Positive psychology is not symptom personal distress, often expressed in the focused, and the promotion of healthy func- private domain, it focuses attention on tioning is applicable to the whole popula- healthy functioning in all areas of life, and tion, so it seems to offer something of value this must include the work

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