Psychology of Career Counseling: New challenges for a new era. Festschrift in honour of Prof. Mark Savickas

This Festschrift in honor of Prof. Mark L. Savickas, the world's leading researcher, scholar, and thinker in the fields of Vocational Psychology and Career Counseling, celebrates his pivotal role in articulating a new framework for career counseling for the 21st century; one that can be used to help clients choose careers and design successful lives. His contribution to these fields has immense theoretical and practical value for all of us involved in helping clients not only choose jobs in a linear manner but, more importantly, construct careers by imposing meaning on their career-related behavior experiences, and designing successful lives (Savickas, 2005; 2011). This is an advanced text that identifies and reflects the enormous global interest in Mark Savickas’ work. The volume is located in a narrative, storied paradigm, promoting the notion of enabling people to design successful lives and make social contributions. Individually and collectively, the authors elaborate on the shift in career counseling towards a contemporary, contextualized approach built on respect and striving to promote career adaptability, thereby exploiting change and its effects. Emphasis is placed on identifying deep-seated strengths and motives in clients and on using innovative techniques to empower clients to a) reflect on their career and life stories, and b) reflect on these reflections to initiate appropriate action because magic is bound to occur when clients begin to move (Savickas, 2011). The authors describe action in terms of three steps: constructing a meaningful perspective in which possibilities become available; devising a life design to enable clients to achieve these possibilities; and, eventually, accomplishing these possibilities through action. Taken together, this book provides a priceless resource for health-care professionals in general and those of us working in the twin fields of guidance and counseling in particular. The text is recommended for scholars, academics, researchers, psychologists, social workers, teachers, and postgraduate students.