Week 4

There are aspects of constructivist counseling's approach to indecision that I agreed with and did not agree with.  Savickas explained indecision as a multidimensional concept which made much more sense to me (1995).  I think in any decision there is some level of indecisiveness and as a decision is being made it changes on a sliding scale.  I also agree that indecision is a product of hesitation in life changes, however not in all aspects of life.  I am indecisive on a daily basis about what to eat, what to wear to work, and which gas station I will stop at.  I look at it more as a step before any commitment where you are exploring and weighing your options in a decision-making process.  I found the theoretical perspective in line with my thinking; however the implementation explained was far from what my preferential treatment may be.

It may be that I am stuck on my psychotherapeutic ideals, but I do not favor this approach to indecision as a presenting problem.  After reading the case study I felt as though it would be more helpful for the client to come up with her own preoccupation/thematic problem, assess her own identity stories, and have her make her own connections.  The intervention seemed too directive and not collaborative.  The whole implementation felt foreign because the counselor is using their own assumptions based on a small amount of information about this person to assess a problem and intervene.  The stories used in the case study were very simple and obscure.  While they might have been defining moments in the client’s life, it is hard for me to see how one could get an accurate perception of twenty years of someone’s life based on those short stories.  The counselor is also making large culturally biased assumptions based on the short stories.  The amount of assumptions made will affect the rapport with the client, even if the counselor is checking them with the client.  

The most important concern I had reading this article was the lack of incorporating barriers from the real world.  It did not address financial realities, job market realities, or other potential barriers involved in career development planning.  I would be interested to read real case studies using this technique with people of lower socioeconomic status or people with non-Euro-American cultural ideals.  I would find it interesting how one might take a thematic problem of discrimination and oppression and find ways to extrapolate that to the future without making the client feel defeated.

Savickas, M. L. (1995). Constructivist counseling for career indecision. The Career Development Quarterly, 43(4), 363-373.