Week 5

            I really hate to be a Debbie downer, because I’d like to read an article that I can learn from and find helpful, but once again I feel like we have to read an article that has little substance.

            So the gist of this article is that Parsons theory, while helpful, does not fully account for the unexplainable, coincidental phenomena that may impact an individual’s career decision. That’s all fine. The author even acknowledges that the research on coincidence has already been addressed. “However, the phenomenon is under-represented in the career literature, although synchronistic events seem to be factors in career opportunities and decisions and can manifest during the career counseling process. The closely related phenomena of happenstance,…serendipity,… and chance events…in career patterns have been well documented and discussed" (Guindon, 2002, p. 205). 

            Chance occurrence has already been well documented and discussed, so what’ the point of research or papers on Synchronicity? The way I understood it when I read Jung’s book on Synchronicity a while back, is that there is no such thing as true coincidence and that mystical, supernatural forces influence what we think to be coincidence. Jung is fun to read and interesting to think about, but to regard any of his theories as scientific is ludicrous.

            I’m starting to get the impression from these past few articles that a portion of Career Development is just a pseudoscience. It’s one thing to discuss people’s viewpoints about fate and synchronicity, however it’s another thing to present it as a scientifically valid reality. This is not science. This is the stuff of theology and art. I can look at a Freudian analysis of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and find it intellectually stimulating, however I would never use Freudian theories in my own clinical work because it’s not scientifically valid.  

            As I posted in my blog post last week, I feel like these authors don’t have anything original to say, and they’re pulling from Jung to apply his theories where they don’t belong. I understand that professors that are associated with prestigious universities (John Hopkins in this case) are pressured to come up with research and write papers, however I think that drives some to reach for straws and publish nonsense like this article. The research that has been already done on chance occurrence, I’m sure, is substantial enough without applying Jung’s mystical take on happenstance. Sometimes when there isn’t any research done already in a certain field, there’s a reason for it.

References
Guindon, M. H. & Hanna, F. J. (2002). Coincidence, Happenstance, Serendipity, Fate, or the Hand of God: Case Studies in Synchronicity. The Career Development Quarterly, 50, 195-208.