Counselling for Career Construction - Connecting Life Themes to Construct Life Portraits
Turning Pain Into Hope

In this book, career counselling history, best practices as well as contemporary models and methods are brought together. In reflecting on the past, present, and future of career counselling, the story of the postmodern, narrative or career construction approach and the model and methods used to advance careers in the 21st century is told. A meta-reflection concept is proposed, based on career construction principles and practices and aimed at providing an examination of repeated reflection in career counselling. Overall, an attempt is made to craft a text that is not just specifically instructive but also more generally so. Whereas the theory section includes much that is hands-on and practical, the inclusion of narratives in the practice section turns theory into practice. Narratives illustrate the complexity and contextuality of partnering with clients toward (re-)designed lives. Ultimately, the volume aims to demonstrate how Mark Savickas' counselling for career construction approach can be used by clients to connect life themes in order to construct life portraits under the guidance of counsellors.





"Counselling for Career Construction harnesses the power of story to yield an innovative, inclusive, and context-rich perspective on career development and counselling for the digital age. Through brilliant scholarly analysis and vivid practical application, Professor Kobus Maree explains and demonstrates in this book how self-reflection and reflexive self-construction - key processes of career construction - assist people across the diverse spectrum of life to use work as an instrument of self-making and self-healing. Counselling for Career Construction sends up a resounding call for us to construct and shape our lives through work with confidence and conviction. More importantly, it shows us how to answer that call."

Prof. P. J. Hartung, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Northeast Ohio Medical University, United States of America.





"The highest compliment to either paradigm or theory is when someone kindly and carefully nudges either toward further definition and utility. Kobus Maree has accomplished the aforementioned both thoroughly and brilliantly."

Prof. W. C. Briddick, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota





"This book ... is a treasure trove of innovative thinking in counselling that provides a launching pad for the next generation of research in this exciting field."

Prof. J. D. Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector, University of the Free State, South Africa





"This book is an exemplar of enlightening, and enlightened, scholarship. Its instructive, avant-garde contents support early-career and veteran practitioners' partnering with clients towards meaningful career construction, interrogate positivist or purely quantitative approaches to career designing, and fuel scholarly debate on the theory and practice of career counselling. Essentially, this text is requisite reading, for psychology students, academics, and practitioners."

Prof. L. C. Theron, the School of Education Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, South Africa





"Offering a unique, inspiring and meaningful contribution to the field of career counselling, this volume advances the Savickian perspective of career construction by advocating reflective self- and career construction under the watchful eye of a career counsellor. It represents essential reading for scholars and career counsellors in the post-modern era."

Prof. A. Di Fabio, Department of Counselling Psychology, the University of Florence, Florence, Italy