Introduction: Postmodern Guidance and Career Counseling Interventions— The New Scenario

This chapter presents the new scenario in the twenty-first century characterized by insecurity, instability, and continuous change. In this scenario, postmodern guidance and career counseling interventions are based on a narrative paradigm. It introduces a narrative shift, and individuals are re-conceptualized as “storied” instead as composed of static traits. Career counselors are asked to help clients to give meaning to their personal and professional lives through the construction of their own self as story. In this framework, the chapter introduces the principles of accountability and the issue of the evaluation of the effectiveness of postmodern guidance and career counseling narrative interventions for the twenty-first century, focusing in particular on the necessity to create specific tools to fully capture the depth and nuances of changes after these narrative interventions. Furthermore, the guidelines for accountability in the twenty-first century are presented that also introduce a positive preventive perspective in postmodern guidance and career counseling narrative interventions.