The Career Counseling Casebook:

A Resource for Practitioners, Students, and Counselor

Educators

Kathy: The Case of the Exploring Environmentalist

Kathy is a 20-year old junior at a large Midwestern university. She was the youngest of
three children and was raised by her mother who had divorced her father when Kathy was
18. Her mother said that she was just waiting for the youngest one to get out of the house
before she filed for divorce. She attended an urban parochial high school in the Midwest.

She has come to the university’s career center to get some help in making a career
decision. During her first session with the career counselor, Kathy talks about a number
of occupations she has considered. She likes to write and has thought about working as a
journalist or a researcher. She is also very concerned about the environment, but she is
not aware of any occupations that would allow her to be involved in the environmental
issues. She also likes working with children and elderly people and wants to know how
she can tie these interests into her career. She has considered the possibility of going to
law school because it seems like a “smart thing to do”.

Her struggle to make a career decision is also reflected in the difficulty she has
experienced in selecting an academic major. After “trying out” several possibilities,
Kathy decided to major in history and French. She is not involved in any extracurricular
or community activities.

Kathy prevents herself in a confidant way. She is very talkative and animated and seems
at ease throughout the session. Her primary concern is identifying what career would be
best for her and she does not make reference to anything beyond her interests. Toward
the end of the first session, she asks you about how you got into counseling because it is
another occupation that interests her.
 Response to Kathy: The Case of the Exploring Environmentalist
Michael E. Hall
The Pennsylvania State University
Elizabeth R. Beil
The Johns Hopkins University

Theoretical Lens
A three-fold clarion call has sounded. There is a need for collaboration between various
psychological specialties (Slaney & Russell, 1987), for convergence of career theory
(Savickas, 1994), and for a contextual approach to the practice of career counseling
(Vondracek & Kawasaki, 1995). From our experience as counseling psychologists in a
career center (Hall) and a counseling center (Beil), we offer a response to the case of
Kathy. We describe an approach to career counseling where the contextual factors of
family and gender are considered primary, rather than secondary influences.
Developmental-systems and feminist theories as well as women’s career psychology
models inform their case conceptualization.

The developmental frame will be provided by essential concepts from Okun’s (1984)
integrated developmental-systems approach. Fintushel and Hillard (1991) will be relied
upon for the feminist/gender view, whereas Betz and Fitzgerland (1987) and Gottfredson
(1996) will guide the women’s career psychology perspective.

Impressions

The information from the initial counseling session forms an emerging image of a
sociable young-adult woman, one who is pleasant and eager to please. Kathy’s
engagement of the counselor hints of a psychological openness, perhaps curiosity. In the
familial sphere, there is evidence for characterizing her family as a “launching-center
family” (primary task: letting go of the oldest child) or a “middle-aged-parents family”
(euphemistically referred to as “empty-nest”). Kathy’s observation that her mother has
been anxious for Kathy to leave the home and her parents’ recent divorce may be
evidence of the separation-individualization tasks associated with this stage of family life.
For example, as her mother ventured ahead once her youngest child left home, Kathy
may have acutely experienced rejection and abandonment, threatening the secure
attachment base that Blustein, Frezioso, and Schultheiss (1995) find critical to tame the
anxiety that accompanies career exploration.

Given that Kathy’s parents’ divorce occurred as she was emerging from adolescence, her
sense of self may have been negatively affected. For example, it appears as though
Kathy’s mother stayed in an unsatisfying relationship until Kathy graduated from high
school. Influenced by exposure to marital and/or family conflict, Kathy may have
become resigned to the unhappy arrangement and adopted her animated style as a
response to family tension.
Kathy presents with many stated interests, but apparently with little experience “trying
out” her interests in the world. Gottfredson (1996) reminds us that constructs such as
masculinity-femininity and occupational prestige help form the self-concept, and that
individuals are likely to consider occupations conforming to their perception of sex roles
and prestige. In fact, these concerns may be weighted more heavily than may interests
alone. Therefore, it may be critical for gender-role identity to be incorporated in Kathy’s
developing career aspirations.

Case Planning

The aforementioned impressions are viewed as markers of a readiness for beginning

career counseling with positive expectations. Taken together, the impressions suggest
that Kathy’s quest for career specification may benefit from assistance with separation-
individuation, as well as consideration of the impact of her parents divorce and her
gender identity on her career identity. McDaniels and Gybers (1992) seven-phase model
of career counseling will be used for the purpose of case planning. In conceptualizing
career counseling as a two-phase process, Hall and Beil’s case conceptualization includes
only the initial three phases of McDaniels and Gysbers’ model.

Initial Phase Action Phase

1) Therapeutic alliance 4) Acquisition of work world information
2) Problem identification 5) Action plan development
3) Exploration of self 6) Choice of implementation
7) Evaluation/renegotiations

Initial Phase

The goals of the initial phase are to establish the counselor-client working relationship, to
increase self-awareness, and to set realistic intervention outcomes for the action phase of
counseling. These goals will be achieved by pursuing the follow two objectives: (1) the
explication of Kathy’s personal decision-making style, and (2) exploration of the familial
and gender context of Kathy’s career identity. The initial counseling session would have
concluded with the counselor and Kathy agreeing that “to find a best career”, it will be
useful to initially look at how, in general, she makes educational/career choices, and also
to identify some of the major influences on those choices.

Action Phase

As a result of the self-exploration and the consideration of familial and gender-related

influences, it is anticipated that the initial phase of counseling might conclude with Kathy
viewing the quest to translate her interests, academic majors, and co-curricular
experiences into a career aspiration as a process. In a fourth and/or fifth session, it would
be posed that given her gregarious temperament and learning-style preferences, Kathy
continues her career exploration by engaging in a series of experimental learning
activities (i.e., co-ops, externships, internships/co-ops, volunteerism, and summer work).
This would be contrasted with the more passive interventions (e.g., talk-counseling,
accessing printed or audiovisual occupational information). A list of developmentally
appropriate activities in which she would participate during her junior and senior years
would be formulated. In addition to the counselor, Kathy will be referred to the offices of
experiential education and the alumni career network to identify potential sites (in
industries related to the environment) where she could research, write, or otherwise
inform others about environmental issues.

Kathy would be expected to participate in the action phase with greater confidence, even
with her level of career uncertainty, given an increased awareness of the contextual
aspect of her career identity. She will, for example, be guided to select a mentor who can
help her ongoing assessment of the effects of sex-role stereotyping. Should Kathy’s
uncertainty revolve around the issues associated with traditionally male-dominated fields,
or roles, then it will be important for the counselor to help Kathy mobilize a strong
system of support, including female role models, mentors, and supportive faculty. This
may be especially useful if the familial context mirrors societal sex-role stereotypes.

As an alternative, it may be useful to consider Betz and Fitzgerald’s (1987) observation

that the process of women’s career choice historically has suffered from the under use of
abilities. In extending Kathy’s interests, her abilities can be assessed as well. Perhaps
through the use of an instrument such as the Self-Directed Search of the Strong Interest
and Skills Confidence Inventory, assessment results could be used to aid Kathy in
identifying the transferable skills she may have developed, but not considered thus far in
her articulation of a career direction. Her facility with French, for example, may suggest
not only an interest, but also a talent in learning language. This could lead to exploration
of language-related careers with children or the elderly.

Conclusion

Practitioners from two different types of counseling centers joined forces to illustrate
approaching the case of Kathy from a multi-theoretical perspective has the potential for
facilitating the design of a career intervention plan where contextual dimensions are
considered as primary features of the presenting issues. The case plan described supports
the notion from feminist theory that for many women external factors weigh powerfully
and can exert great influence on decisions. “Because of the mutually formative nature of
family relationships, a divorce after twenty or so years of marriage profoundly alters the
patterns of interconnection and thus shakes the roots of each member’s self-perception”
(Fintushel & Hillard, 1991). Thus, the proposed intervention strategy is likely to be
among the most efficacious because it respects the development and systemic aspects of
Kathy’s individual experience (Ivey & Ivey, 1999).
 References

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