Innovation in career counseling: myths and realities

Maria Eduarda Duarte

Faculty of Psychology

University of Lisbon

May, 2015

The meanings of phrases • To innovate• Innovation• Newness (new)

…something new and dismissing everything else….

2

But what are we talking about when we refer to newness or innovation?

To renew – to do the same thing again

eός

novus

INNOVARE

innovationinnovation

inovațieinnovasjon

innovazione

innováció

inovovat’

3

The modern day concept of innovation….

Something positive…. Valued by the elite….

Think another way…....somewhat dissidents…

Refuse the commonplace

4

TOPOS KOINÓS // LOCUS COMMUNIS

In the eloquence of the antiquity….

INVENTIO as a model for defining

DISPOSITIO as a model for constructing

ELOCUTIO as a model for transforming

SURE SIGNSLESS SECURE SIGNS

CREDIBLE SIGNS

5

Communication based on repetition….Rejecting any form of innovation

6

REPETITION: synonym of a lack of culture

The refusal of the commonplace is a CULTURAL CRITERION

7

Being an INNOVATOR is… being a DISSIDENT

Dissidentiadissidência

dissentimentdissensodisent

Not to be in agreement….. To drive innovation

8

Innovation and career counseling

9

Innovation in counseling:

NOT a quantitative operationBut…

AN OPERATION OF A QUALITATIVE NATURE

To find the general set of relationships which define INDIVIDUAL SINGULARITY(nothing can be forgotten or ignored)

10

Counseling is NOT constituted in a theoretical body for repetition,but rather,

FOR THE ARTICULATION OF DIFFERENCES AND THEIR READING IN THE CONTEXT

In a counseling process….Up to what point can all of an individual’s responses and their

adequacy for social grammar be identified??

11

THE FIRST ACT OF DISSENT… • The first career counseling services

(vocational guidance)

THE SECOND ACT OF DISSENT…• Career as a developmentalist process

PROFESSION

CAREER

THE THIRD ACT OF DISSENT…• Constructionist perspective

RELATIONSHIPS

Distinction between theories (development // career counseling)

12

“All rulers are the heirs of those who conquered before them….

History is the shock between tradition and political organization”

Benjamin’s thesis can help to understand the historic process of counseling theories...

THE RECOVERY OF HUMAN AND ONE’S SINGULARITY

13

A complex artist like the painter Paul Klee and a programmatic one like Loos – both reject the traditional, solemn, noble image of man, festooned with all the sacrificial offerings of the past. They turn instead to the naked man of the contemporary world who lies screaming like a newborn babe in the dirty diapers of the present. (…) Scheerbart is interested in inquiring how our telescopes, our airplanes, our rockets can transform human beings as they have been up to now into completely new, lovable, and interesting creatures. Moreover, these creatures talk in a completely new language. (Benjamin, 1933, p. 733).

14

Innovation in career counseling

… a theoretical reference…

INVENTIO as a model for defining

DISPOSITIO as a model for constructing

ELOCUTIO as a model for transforming

15

16

Career Counseling in search of singularity

17

IDENTITY TEMPORALITY (uncertainty, instability)

A permanent construction…uniqueness… “individuation”

The search for innovation, and the acts of dissent and rupture…

SocioDynamic approach (Peavy) // Narrative career counseling (Cochran) // Storytelling model (McMahon & Watson) // Career construction model (Maree) // Action Theory (Young et al.)….

18

Common aspects:

• Various games of coordination• Affinity between the “discipline’s” procedural devices

Disciplinary Identity

• An historic order to the definition• A logical order• An attempt to establish basic dispositions

19

Definition and Theory

DEFINITION and its instrumental character

BUT…

ALL INFORMATION proposed by THEORY never coincides with the extensive area covered by the DEFINITION

20

Innovation and designation of career counseling

It is difficult to bring about a definition of counseling without an implicit theory of counseling

WHILE

The construction of a theory does not oblige the establishment of a definition of counseling

The class of things which are called career counseling exists and is manifested through a historical legacy present in social and cultural memory

21

• A separation of definition and theory

• Theory can be used as a dynamic alternative to a definition

Contrary to a definition, theory does not look at counseling as an ideal construction, but rather as an open process which is objectivized in

different waysTheory take into account intersections with social manifestations…

Self-reflective thoughtSelf-regeneration

22

Concluding…

• The refusal of the common place is a criterion of culture• To innovate can been seen as flexibility and a personal demand

• (held back by social and other kinds of pressure)

• Counseling as an interrogative process of critical thinking

23

“Travel? One need only exist to travel. I go from day to day, as from station to station, in the train of my body or my destiny, leaning out over the streets and squares, over people’s faces and gestures, always the same and always different, just like scenery. If I imagine, I see. What more do I do when I travel? Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to travel to feel. […] The end of the world, like the beginning, is in fact our concept of the world. It is in us that the scenery is scenic. If I imagine it, I create it; if I create it, it exists; if it exists, then I see it like any other scenery. So why travel? In Madrid, Berlin, Persia, China, and at the North or South Pole, where would I be but in myself, and in my particular type of sensations? Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn’t what we see but what we are.”

24

The road to school through the fields

I write math problems,turned in late:

I marched eight miles a day, each day.Four to school, four home.The entire eight years.

How many steps did I takethrough snow, through clay,into murmuring thunder?

The road was trudged along not only by my feet,but next to her beat each pounding of my heart.That little road was there and is thereand holds firm under us even today.

Holds firm in my grateful soul.

Milan Rúfus(Translated by Allan Stevo)

Poľná cesta do gymnázia

Píšem si počty,počty opozdené:

Kráčal som dvanásť kilometrov denne.Šesť do školy, šesť domov.Po celých osem rokov.

Koľko to bolo krokovo snehu, do hliny,do mrmlajúcich hromov...

Šliapaná nielen nohami(aj srdce do nej búši),je tam tá cestičkaa drží pod nami.

I v mojej vďačnej duši.

Milan Rúfus

25