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Journal of Vocational Education &

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Career projection: narrative in context
Charles P. Chen a
a
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Online Publication Date: 01 June 1997

To cite this Article: Chen, Charles P. (1997) 'Career projection: narrative in context',
Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 49:2, 311 - 326
To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/13636829700200012
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13636829700200012

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 CAREER PROJECTION
Journal of Vocational Education and Training, Vol. 49, No. 2, 1997

Career Projection:
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narrative in context

CHARLES P. CHEN
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

ABSTRACT Following the emerging constructivist theoretical frame in career

counselling, the conception of self and its interaction with social context are
discussed. The emphasis is given to individuals’ agentic roles in search for
meaning through narratives with respect to their life career projection.
Several counselling implications to reinforce and facilitate this
meaning-making process are highlighted.

Introduction
To understand the relationship between people and their social context
remains a relevant issue with regard to career development in
post-industrial (PI) society. This is because the meaning of career is
always understood within the domain of a social environment (Collin &
Young, 1992; Herr & Cramer, 1992; Zunker, 1994). The profound changes in
PI western society have brought new challenges to human life in general,
and career development in particular (Herr, 1990; Feller, 1991; Peavy, 1993;
Savickas, 1993). The central question seems to be this: How can an
individual be better prepared to position him or herself into the right
career path in this swift societal transformation?
This article suggests that more attention should be focused on the
individual person as an active agent in the process of career construction.
Following the emerging directions of constructivist ideology in career
development, this article (a) examines the significant aspects of the self,
and (b) explores the possible integration between the self and the social
context. This article contends that should the integration be achieved, it is
possible for individuals to gain a sense of control over their career course
in the rapidly-changing social context.
The term ‘self’ is a very dynamic concept used in varied
psychologies, and one which, perhaps, has too many shades of meaning
such as symbolic images, a paradox and even a fact (Plaut, 1985).
Therefore, it is necessary to make it clear that the term ‘self’ used in this

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paper is defined as synonymous with the word ‘individual’ or ‘person’.

These three terms, namely ‘the self’, ‘individual’ and ‘person’, are
interchangeable in meaning within the following discussion.

Aspects of Selfhood
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The Notion of Self

Self-concept has long been a crucial element in vocational psychology
since Super (1957, 1963, 1980) proposed his developmental framework in
the field. Many related conceptions, such as Tiedeman’s emphasis on
ego-identity development in a career sense (see Tiedeman & O’Hara, 1963)
and Gottfredson’s (1981, 1985) work about major components of
self-concept, all contributed to identify and enrich the significant role of
self-concept in one’s life career themes. In PI western society, it seems
very few people would question the significance of self-concept any more.
However, we now face the challenge of re-defining the content and
meaning of self-concept in our current world (Taylor, 1989; Giddens, 1991).
In other words, there is a need to modify the term with its current extent
and context.
The construct of self-concept depicts a state of mind concerning
one’s belief structure in general. A set of psychological components such
as self-awareness, self-perception, self-image, self-esteem and the like,
constitute this thinking structure based on the individual’s experience
with the outside world. Self-concept functions to provide one with a
certain sense of very personalised (role-orientated) identity to encounter
the environment (Nurius, 1986).
In a PI environment, the status of twentieth century perspective of
self is shaken by a much more complicated and dynamic reality. While the
external experience is still an important factor in self-concept formation,
people have to play a more pro-active role than ever before in their
subjective world as they construct a self-identity, which must be
constantly revised (Master, 1991; Peavy, 1993).
In accordance with the PI reality, the construct of ‘the self’ (see
Moustakas, 1956) becomes more dynamic and holistic than the
established construct of self-concept (Peavy, 1993). There are at least
three reasons for this argument. First, the self includes the part of
self-concept, and it tends to give a broad sense of the total person, not
only the psychological part, but the physical (action) part as well (Plaut,
1985). Secondly, self reflects more a sense of constructive process. The
self, acting as an agent in the process, is a developing and changing
variable rather than a developed state (Auerbach, 1985). This makes
life-theme narratives more dynamic and meaningful. Thirdly, the self
carries a more obvious intent for action. Not only does cognition process
the information and send the orders out, but the implementation of action

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follows through the integral behavioural efforts. Thinking and doing are
blended into this process of interaction with the external world (Fisher,
1988; Polkinghorne, 1990). As the post-industrial notion of self reflects a
more active, complete, and consolidated personhood in contextual
situations, it broadens the operational definition for an individual’s total
psychological encounter with the environment.
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Self-efficacy Expectations
An important part of the construct of self is the self-knowledge
synthesised by Bandura (1977, 1984, 1986) in his self-efficacy theory.
Following Bandura’s (1986) definition, self-efficacy expectations are
“people’s judgements of their capabilities to organise and execute courses
of action required to attain designated types of performance” (p. 391).
According to Bandura (1977, 1986), self-efficacy expectations affect choice
and initiation of behaviour, effort, persistence and, hence, level of
performance or accomplishment.
While making life decisions, people need to be clearly aware of their
aptitude to carry out the tasks required by the environment. This is
necessary because there is often a discrepancy between what people
assume they are capable of and what they are really able to achieve.
Sound judgements of self-ability, therefore, become one of the core factors
in determining the satisfactory outcome from an action plan. The bottom
line here is to assess individual ability properly and match this aspect
with the conditions of the social context. Consequently, a
person-environmental congruence will be achieved (Wheeler, 1983).
Research findings (Betz & Hackett, 1981; Lent & Brown, 1986) suggest that
self-efficacy expectations can tremendously influence an individual’s life in
domains such as academic performance and career options. This calls for
the understanding of self-efficacy’s influence in career planning (Betz,
1992).
In knowing this kind of cause-effect relationship, attention should be
given to the correctness and applicability of self-efficacy expectations.
That is, both over-estimates and under-estimates of self-ability are to be
avoided. Self-efficacy is to reflect a person’s real coping capacity in a
certain social context.
To strengthen the validity and utilisation of self-efficacy in real life
applications, it is pivotal not to ignore the concurrent social environment
from which self-efficacy expectations are generated, constituted, and
tested. People’s beliefs of self-capacity reflect what people perceive they
may accomplish within this very social context. In this sense, self-efficacy
is based on environmental requirements and limitations. Beliefs of
self-capacity may need to be modified in varied time frames and social
contexts. Otherwise, inaccurate self-assessment may occur to give
misleading perceptions to a person’s life and career direction. It is

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imperative to have a good understanding and knowledge of the

environment while developing self-efficacy expectations.

Career Projection Through Narrative

The Self as Agent in Projection
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The mission, or sense of vocation, for the integrated self is to initiate a

satisfactory, meaningful and complete life story for oneself (Cochran,
1990). If career is perceived as a synonym or a major part of one’s life, it is
necessary to examine how the self makes sense of career, in terms of
personal plans, objectives, and goals. This calls for the individual to be an
active agent, not a passive subject, in the search for meaning. As such,
people launch their career projection into the social context, and modify
this projection so that it becomes better integrated with the contextual
change.
Modern views of career development emphasise the differential
(Williamson, 1972; Holland, 1966, 1973, 1985; Dawis & Lofquist, 1984)
developmental (Ginzberg et al, 1951; Super, 1957, 1980; Gottfredson, 1981)
and social learning approaches (Krumboltz et al, 1976). While these
approaches each have their own distinctive theoretical frame, at least one
implicit (if not explicit) assumption which they share is that people, in one
way or another, are to follow established conditions and norms rather
than create new environments for themselves. Career exploration is
primarily based on the rationale of retrospective thinking, observable
truth and tested hypothesis such as (a) matching one’s ability or
personality type with existing aspects of the world of work, (b) fitting
oneself into a sequence of basic roles through the lifespan and (c)
acquiring needed skills to make a living.
Although these recognised frames of thinking still and probably will
continue to be very pertinent to career development, they may not be
sufficient to conceptualise the mission of the self in career making during
the post-industrial era. In tune with rapid societal changes, the trend of
career and vocational psychology is toward a multiple perspective
discourse with the central focus on a person’s quest for meaning-finding
and meaning-making in life (Savickas, 1993). This trend reflects a parallel
process of constructivist perspectives in social science in general and in
human psychology in particular. The constructivist view contends that (a)
humans are self-interpreting beings, and they are capable of negotiating
and making meanings in life (Mosham, 1994; Peavy, 1992); (b) persons
have the freedom to explore and construct their life narratives and reality
purposefully (Peavy, 1992; Agnew & Brown, 1989); and (c) human agency
is contextualized in life events and alternatives can be engendered in
context (Efran & Clarfield, 1993; Dean, 1993; Peavy, 1992).

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To coincide with these constructivist principles, Collin & Young

(1986, 1992) proposed new directions for career theory, and this proposal
has been increasingly acknowledged and echoed by literature in the field
(Collin & Young, 1992). The central theme for the proposed new directions
deals with how individuals will make narratives in the social context. The
person him- or herself is to organise life events, make the story plot,
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interpret the meaning of the story and search for new meaning through
varied ‘hermeneutical forms’ (Collin & Young, 1992, p. 7).
This constructivist way of thinking provides a foundation for viewing
the self as an active agent in the career building process. First, there is a
sense of initiation. The person is the vehicle for action, and he or she is
going to put forth an action plan which not only contains “what I am
supposed to do”, but “what I want to do”. Nonetheless, it should be noted
that the individual sense of calling here is always affected and restrained
by environmental conditions. In one way or another, a person finds him- or
herself coping with expected and/or unexpected difficulties. These
roadblocks form contextual circumscriptions which limit the scope of the
individual’s life career planning if it is totally based upon personal goals
(i.e. “what I want to do”). Therefore, contextual circumscriptions are not
avoided, but rather, incorporated as a part of the content in story making.
In other words, the person is to modify the context with new meaning, to
supply the context with new content and to be a part of the
context-making. In this respect, the person is not a passive receiver who is
limited by the context, but a practice agent who ‘projects’ well-organised
initiatives and schemes into the making of the context. The individual does
not necessarily have to fit into the fixed characters, but rather, can make
diverse, dynamic, and creative roles for him- or herself to play in the
context.
Secondly, there is a sense of future orientation. The person is a
writer who can script the narrative. One does not always have to focus on
what has already happened. Greater meaningfulness may exist in future
plans. The person has the freedom to think beyond the past and the
present by putting insight into the future story plot. Instead of feeling
uncertain about what’s going to happen, plans allow one to feel better
prepared and more confident.
Thirdly, there is a sense of negotiation for change. Narrative can be
formed from different vantage points and perspectives. The narrator
makes the plot line. In other words, characters and plots in the narrative
can be negotiated. Hence, the interpretation of the story becomes an
active thought-provoking process. As past experience can be viewed
differently, the reframing of cognition becomes possible. Furthermore, the
present and future narrative will be re-fabricated along the way of
personal growth. As a result, the constant revision of the future story line
will integrate the person into the changing context with greater cohesion.

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Narrative in Context
A social context is a combination of political, economic, historical and
sociocultural components. All these external or environmental factors fuel
as well as limit an individual’s psychological movement. In coping with the
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developing and changing aspects of the social context, people’s life and
career decisions tend to follow societal trends (Amundson, 1995, 1989;
Herr, 1990; Feller, 1991). On the one hand, social dynamics may produce
favourable conditions for an individual to greatly extend personal
exploration in life. On the other hand, social context can also hinder or
even undermine an individual’s life career development (Peavy, 1993).
The social context sets a restricted terrain in which people are to
manoeuvre in career projection. Sloan (1992) argued that “often these
social processes are central in locking the deciding subject into a
particular decision frame or in constituting the compulsiveness or anxiety
with which a decision is made” (p. 169). Social and political environment is
sometimes beyond the individuals’ expectation and control. This causes
dilemmas in coping strategies. The central issue appears to be how can
the person possess an insight to project his or her career in different
social contexts such as war, political tension and instability, social unrest,
big change of social structure, technology revolution, fast economic
growth, economic recession and the like. There are no simple answers to
this question. However, one thing people do control is their own attitudes
and actions toward the particular social context they are in (Morton, 1991;
Krannich, 1991). Thus, people interpret their present roles and situations
within the current social context and, based on that, people construct
narratives for their future career themes. Recent studies of narrative
models in exploring life career themes suggest that people’s subjective
experience in going through their life stories, and understanding the
meaning derived from these stories is essential to their career planning
and project (Young, 1988; Young & Collin, 1988; Cochran, 1990; MacGregor
& Cochran, 1988; Miller-Tiedeman, 1988; Avickas, 1989).
In story making, the writer may change his or her original scheme as
story planning proceeds. It is not unusual for new characters to emerge,
images of some characters to change (e.g. the protagonist becomes the
antagonist or vice versa), new surroundings to occur and the like. The
person as the writer in making the life career story (or career projection)
also goes through this process of framing and reframing his or her raw
material. Career projection, in this sense, means a series of intertwined
behaviours and phenomena of meaning construction. Initially, the plot line
is open. This presupposes that the person/story-writer has the freedom to
plan the settings in which sequence and combination of events are going
to happen. The person may not always be able to change the context,
however, he or she is able to decide which self-character(s) might be more

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appropriate for them to project into the context. Hence, achieving a

person-context integration becomes possible. Secondly, story making
becomes more process-orientated than outcome-orientated. That is, the
way of making a story that a person has learned from the process
becomes a new resource for the ongoing development of narratives as well
as new narrative formation in the future. As a significant part of the total
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life making, narratives in career projection are always in the process of

developing. Thirdly, more attention is given to meaning-search and
meaning-making because both the meaning for the individual character
and the context can be interpreted differently in the narrator/writer’s eyes
as he or she creates a series of new stories in career projection. Fourthly,
action is necessary as narratives only make sense when the interaction
among characters and environment happen. This suggests that the
narrator/writer needs to go ahead fulfilling the duties of the role(s) in the
upcoming story so that narratives of career projection will be alive and
meaningful.
Narratives only exist within context, and for career projection, this is
particularly true. To envision a future story line, it is pivotal not to ignore
the past and present experiences, from which anticipated future
experiences build. Career projection aims at constructing a better
person-in-world future. Greater consistency between story planning and
making means more coherent relationship between the narrative and the
reality. Consequently, the congruence between people and context will be
accomplished in life career development.

Career Counselling Implications

Using Narrative in Life Career Projection
After reviewing a series of related works in the field, Young & Friesen
(1994) postulated that with respect to life career development, narrative
(a) is crucial in shaping one’s identity and relationship with others, (b) has
the same function as story, and (c) means both the story-making process
and the cognitive frame of the story. In a study focusing on narrative
structure and parental influence in young adults’ career development,
Young & Friesen (1994) identified and illustrated five narrative types.
These types include (1) the progressive narrative with a dramatic turning
point; (2) the progressive narrative within a positive evaluation frame; (3)
the progressive narrative with negatively evaluated stages; (4) the
anticipated regressive narrative; and (5) the sad narrative (see Young &
Friesen, 1994). To parallel with some of the main ideas drawn from these
five types, the utilisation of narrative in career projection consists of at
least the following aspects:
Retrospectivity. Narratives apparently have much to do with what has
already happened. Recollecting past events establishes the initial basis for

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knowing the self and its relationship with social context. In career
projection, the client is provided with time and space to go back to his or
her life career history. The career counsellor plays the role of a process
facilitator who “holds the client’s hand” in walking through this
psychological journey of self-exploration and self-understanding. When
story is told from a retrospective view, facts and/or details are important
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as they can have enlightening effects for later exploration. “Does the client
feel a sense of thoroughness and completion?” The counsellor should keep
this question in mind while actively listening to the client’s stories.
Reflexivity. While letting the client be aware of what has been occurring in
life career development is pivotal, it is perhaps more important to help
him or her develop a sense of reflexivity toward the content of narratives
unfolded in the story-telling process. Reflexivity here refers to the
interactive meaning-making and meaning-interpreting function the client
adopts in perceiving and processing the narrative content. Rather than
narrowly looking at “what has happened to me’, the counsellor helps the
client broaden the horizon to encompass a wide range of personal,
environmental, sociocultural and psychological ingredients into the
client’s reflection on narratives. Thus, a dynamic and integrated
‘person-context’ relationship will be engendered to make life and career
make sense.
Sense of Development. A person’s life career development is an ongoing
process. In other words, this process manifests a continuing story starting
from a person’s birth to death. To incorporate narratives in career
projection, the client is assisted to become more aware of the life career
journey he or she has been going through, and is still carrying on.
Story-telling should generate a stronger sense of process, development
and change. Not only does narrative explore what happened in the past,
but it also anticipates what may occur in the future. With these notions in
mind, the counsellor helps the client focus more on the present
meaning-interpretation, and based on that, insights and strategies may be
incorporated into the current implementation and future construction of
one’s life career plans.
Descriptive Means. Narrative exploration in career projection can employ a
variety of qualitative data-gathering methods in facilitating the client to
construct and tell his or her stories. The common techniques used in
counselling such as ‘genogram’ exercise and ‘life-line’ exercise, among
other things, can be useful tools. In genogram exercise, the client is asked
to draw different symbols to describe family members and other
significant relationships. The drawing becomes a rich source that
generates a series of stories related to the client’s life and career. Lifelong
exercise itself is like a collection of the individual’s narratives. The client is
asked to pinpoint the significant life career events on a straight line, and

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then reflect on those events. Moreover, the life-line can also be used to
make future projection in which the client is asked to point out the
anticipated events in a life-line from now till the end of his or her life.
Similarly, both the client’s oral and written autobiography can also be
effective means of descriptions in narrative approach. While in the former
instance the client’s narratives might be recorded through audio and/or
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video devices, the client in the latter situation can write his or her stories
at home, and then, bring them to the counselling session for further
exploration. All these mechanisms are flexible in nature as they can be
either used on a separate basis or blended into a combination.

Positive Uncertainty
No matter how insightful individuals are, they always carry a sense of
ambiguity in career projection because there are always unknowns that
accompany life narratives. In other words, people can never be one
hundred per cent sure that the story will develop as they have planned.
Thus, they must deal with uncertainty. Gelatt (1989) postulated that
rational thinking alone is insufficient for decision making in people’s lives
in today’s rapid changing world (i.e. PI society), and people’s subjective
intuition is more important in this process. The conception of ‘positive
uncertainty’ proposes a new attitude toward uncertainty, in which people
feel uncertain about the future yet positive about the uncertainty (Gelatt,
1989). This notion may be very heuristic in helping a person in career
projection. In composing the narrative, many unknown variables (these
include the factors individuals think they have already known but actually
they do not know, e.g. the nature of work life, the structure of jobs, the
demands of world of work, etc.) may surface as the process proceeds. A
person’s attitude provides the basis for practical and technical measures
to encounter all kinds of emerging problems, and the subjective thinking
becomes the core to coordinate and control the integration of the self and
the context. In career counselling, it is advisable to help clients become
friends with uncertainty. Thus, uncertainty will not be seen as abnormal
and threatening in career development, but rather, a component in the
structure of narrative, a catalyst for new projection, a chance for
alternatives, a condition for making positive change, and a path to life
career growth.

Perspective Taking
How a person plots and develops narrative largely depends on his or her
perception of reality. Different perspectives underlying the perception
may generate different ways of thinking and doing things (Amundson,
1994a). For example, if a positive perspective is taken to look at the
phenomenon of uncertainty, the circumstance will be dealt with more

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positively than negatively, and vice versa. Similarly, career projection can
be regarded as a process of perspective taking. Several points need to be
taken into consideration when the counsellor tries to help the client
construct and develop life career narratives.
First, perspective-taking follows the context. Although perspectives
from past and learned experiences are valuable data for framing present
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and future narrative, they are not necessarily all feasible and accurate.
These perspectives need to be filtered through the current ‘contextual
layers’ such as time, place and situations. In other words, the established
or received perspectives are to be challenged, and they are selectively
incorporated into the frame of the new story so that these inappropriate
ones will be strained out. Hence, these one-sided, narrowed and outdated
standpoints will not become hurdles to the development of a new
successful story.
Secondly, perspective-taking encourages flexibility. When the person
is able to stand at a different position or angle to think, to observe, to
choose, to plan and to act during a life career journey, more ways of
projection arise. As the combination of narrative becomes diverse and
dynamic, one’s chances for making successful projection will greatly
increase.
Thirdly, perspective taking produces distinctive meaning. The unique
meaning derived from one’s subjective world will provide resourcefulness
for one to develop new perspectives, which will be most relevant to his or
her particular situation. Within the social context, the person will be able
to stretch his or her potential to the limit in career projection with great
inspiration and aspiration.
The effectiveness of career counselling, to a large extent, depends on
how successful the counselling process is in helping the client adopt an
open attitude as well as a broad scope in perspective taking. In a narrative
study that illustrated individuals’ life career themes, Cochran (1990) found
that when a person is a participant in the narrative, he or she is likely to
take a narrow-mind perspective toward life events; however, when one
becomes a spectator with different perspectives, he or she is to have a
much more broader vision to identify with, and make sense of what is
going on. As a result, meaning-interpretation and meaning-creation
become possible. In this regard, career counsellors should help clients to
become spectators in their life career development.

Compromise Through Negotiation

If clients adopt a positive attitude toward uncertainty, and take different
perspectives on life, then they find that compromise is often unavoidable
(Sloan, 1992). The process of narrative takes into account many
adjustments. A good story often embraces several revisions following
contextual needs and the narrator’s development of subjective

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experiences. Personal and environmental circumstances vary from person

to person. The character will be better off to try another route if he or she
has got stuck in the present impasse for sometime. Hence, content such as
roles, time, scene and even story line are open to change as the narrative
develops. In terms of career projection, this is identified as the conception
of ‘compromise’.
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The original term ‘Compromise’ used in career counselling bears

partially the negative meaning of giving up or retreating from one’s initial
position, which implies that one needs to give up something in order to
gain something (Ginzberg et al, 1951; Gottfredson, 1981). However, its
meaning may be perceived differently within a narrative context. That is,
to make a personal story in the PI society, the content can be negotiated.
For instance, the definition of the self can be negotiated, and the meaning
of person-in-context can be redefined as well. Compromise reflects a more
dynamic, flexible, and open relationship between people and the
environment. An important feature of the PI society is that the person
seems to have more freedom than ever before in working with the context
(Giddens, 1991; Peavy, 1993). When people still compromise with reality,
they may find that social context compromises with them. For example, a
computer programmer or a stock-broker may not need to spend an
eight-hour working day in the office or stock market. Instead, he or she
can use flexible scheduling at home to make a sound professional life or
career. The established sense of career context is altered in this case. This
may substantially revise the traditional connotation of a one-way
compromise (i.e. people make compromise to context). The function of
compromise may transform more and more to the meaning-making
process. The person becomes very pro-active in making compromises
with self, with others and with the environment. As such, new meaning
engendered from the process is to enrich the narrative and, eventually, to
make career projection become true.
In making compromises, clients need to assign themselves new roles
in the story. As a result, identity negotiation becomes necessary. This is
because “identity negotiation is an ongoing process throughout life, but
becomes particularly significant during times of transition when
boundaries are fluid” (Amundson, 1994b, p. 3). However, it should be
noted that ‘identity’ here is used interchangeably with the meaning of
‘self-roles’. In this respect, it should be understood that first, the self is a
combination of both internal and external self identities. Identity
negotiation does not mean to destroy the innate self, or to put a mask on a
fragile self as an ego defense mechanism. Rather, it is a positive
interpretation of self in different contexts.
Secondly, negotiating identity does not mean that the person gives
him or herself up to the reality pressure. On the contrary, it suggests
persistent drive with flexible and situational tactics in career projection
(Amundson, 1994b).

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Thirdly, negotiation implies possible agreement or non-agreement.

This may open more space for the narrator/individual to manoeuvre in his
or her subjective world toward a positive uncertainty. That is, in case this
round of ‘negotiation’ fails, there are other opportunities to re-negotiate
through narrative (i.e. search for new meaning). The narrative thus
becomes more dynamic and constructive.
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Fourthly, the person is not necessarily a passive subject who is

forced into negotiation to make compromises. In contrast, the person can
actively initiate negotiations when there is no pressure from the context at
all. For example, after years of successful and satisfactory practice as a
physician, a person would like to find new challenges and different
experience in life, so he or she decides to quit medical practice, going to
law school to become a lawyer.
As a crucial part of career counselling, clients need to learn the
important aspects of compromising through negotiation process. The
counsellor should help the client foster a more flexible manner and
situational tactics to initiate an applicable career projection. The client is
to understand that the adjustment to new identities or roles can be
utilised as a vantage point to enrich the whole narrative and he or she be
the agent to initiate the negotiation as well. This suggests a positive
attitude to encounter change. With negotiations and compromises, the
client may develop multi-dimensional methodologies and dynamic clues to
construct the themes of his or her life story, and eventually, to reach a
successful climax.

Conclusions
Following constructivist thinking, the person-context interaction with
respect to career projection was discussed in this paper. The central focus
of the discussion lies on the topic of how individuals are to employ their
subjective views and experiences in search for meaning in the
post-industrial era. To enhance the congruence between the person and
the social environment, career counselling and vocational psychology aim
at promoting human agency in creating meaningful life career themes.
Consequently, personal well-being as well as societal welfare will be
advanced. Although scientific methods and logical reasoning are still valid
in problem-resolution, they are not sufficient as the only avenue to
encounter human issues. Subjective perspectives along with working
models such as narrative construction of life-themes need to be added
into counselling psychology in general, and career counselling in
particular (Savickas, 1992). Given the reality that challenge and
opportunity co-exist along the way of meaning-making, it is pivotal for
individuals to remain open and flexible in launching and implementing
their career plans. This can be the prerequisite for writing a meaningful

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and fruitful personal life story. The career counsellor is to support his or
her client to become such a writer.

Correspondence
Charles P. Chen, Department of Counselling Psychology, Faculty of
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Education, University of British Columbia, 2125 Main Mall, Vancouver,

British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada.

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