A client presents for career counselling, frustrated with where they are in their career. For some reason, they can’t convince themselves to go after the career they want; something is holding them back. Have you ever experienced this situation in your work as a career counsellor?
In this article, I will explain how we can leverage principles derived from psychoanalysis to help our clients overcome situations such as this. I am not the first to present this argument; Dr. Kevin Stoltz, Professor Larry Cochran and Dr. Mark Savickas have been advocating for a psychoanalytical approach to career counselling for some time. I will focus on the work of Alfred Adler, and specifically his theory of early recollections (ERs).
Career counselling is pragmatic in its approach. The aim is to help the people we work with identify career goals and then design strategies to move toward those goals. I like this approach and I believe strongly in it. However, sometimes this strategy has failed me. At times, it felt like the client I was working with was actively trying to sabotage their own progress. It was as if there were separate entities pulling my client in different directions. No matter what I did to help them define and pursue their career goals I was met with resistance, which can be very frustrating for all concerned. Psychoanalysis can offer explanations for why this happens and strategies for dealing with this phenomenon.
The science of psychoanalysis
In simple terms, psychoanalysis is the process of inviting a person to speak freely about themselves with a particular focus on struggles they are experiencing, significant relationships and experiences from early childhood, and the potential connections between these two elements.
Psychoanalysis struggles for legitimacy in the 21st century partly due to its subjective nature. The discipline has not been examined as rigorously as other approaches. Nonetheless, recent research has demonstrated that childhood experiences play a significant role in our perception of ourselves as adults and how we relate to others. Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel argues that “Psychoanalysis still represents the most coherent and intellectually satisfying view of the mind.”
Further, recent studies have shown that part of our brains can evaluate goals outside of our conscious awareness; this means that our brains are deciding if we should pursue a goal without us knowing it. It is like a decision for our future is being made by other people in a separate room to us and we are only informed afterwards.
A psychoanalytical approach to career counselling
The era of unconscious irrational phenomena driving our emotions and actions appears to be far less appealing when contrasted against other therapeutic methods such as positive psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Personally, I leverage several psychological strategies depending on what I suspect a client may need in a given situation.
Returning to career counselling, it is understandable that those of us working in this area are reluctant to apply psychoanalytical theory. I want to make clear that I am not suggesting we engage in psychoanalyzing our clients – neither are Stoltz, Savickas or Cochran. We do not need to be trained psychoanalysts to apply this method. We are applying a framework proposed by Alfred Adler which he termed early recollections, or ERs, which are an excellent entry point for the application of psychoanalysis in career counselling.
Using this approach in career counselling involves encouraging a client to reflect on the most important relationships they had in early life and what influence those relationship had on their development. The effects may be positive or negative. The hope of this exercise is that relevant information will arise to explain how they got to the position they are in. This can help shed light on why there may be resistance in pursuing valued career goals.
Our parents and communities have an enormous influence on us as children, and the strength of that imprinting follows us into adulthood. This can create a perception that we are letting down the most important people in our lives if we go against their expectations. This may not seem rational; as adults we are entitled to pursue a career that aligns with who we are. However, as psychoanalysis argues, human are not always rational.
“We would ask our clients to share the ambitions that their parents had for them and to share their own occupational daydreams. What did your parents want you to become? What have you daydreamed about becoming?” (Watkins, 1993. p. 370)
In my experience, this approach of helping clients explore earlier phases of their life, and specifically the relationships they had with people such as guardians during that time, provides rich information for explaining why they may be dissatisfied with their current career circumstances, and why they are unable to define and pursue career goals that more closely align with their natural inclinations. When we give space to our clients to explore these internal struggles and we encourage them to put this struggle into words, the results can be significant. It is the powerful act of “explaining out loud” to another person that can lead to real change. These “a-ha” moments can reduce resistance that is blocking a client from pursuing valued career goals.
