Just a note

I was surprised to learn something about myself that I was unaware of up until this point. I love working with words, lists, and any kind of written piece, but tell me to put things into diagrams or symbols and I feel uncomfortable. So, I have been told I am a person of words not a creative designer. This explains for me why I took an almost instant dislike of putting constructs into a diagram, and representing my life in a life space with symbols. For me, long live the narrative technique and the power of language! Although each to his own I must add...

I don't want to be a careers adviser.......

I don't want to be a careers adviser if I am supposed to curb people's individuality and any innovative ideas they might have. If someone came to me and said they wanted to join the Hong Kong Police, for example, I would say "Do whatever floats your boat!" So am I a post-modernist thinker? I believe we are all different, and should be free to choose what we do in life. One of my grandfathers came from a family of farmers and gave up his right to owning a farm because he wanted to work in a bank. He became a bank manager, which I think proves my point. I have just realised that the word "freedom" keeps coming up.

Kelly's Theory...how sound is it?

I agree that we should be empowering clients by exploring possibilities with them, but I am wondering whether we should be analysing them by using Kelly's theory. It could be seen as a way of messing with people's heads. What if we were to get something wrong? We are only humans ourselves, and we are not mind-readers as far as I know. But wait, we do mess with people's heads, we question their knowledge, and we try to get some of them to move beyond their comfort zone. Here is Kelly's fundamental postulate:
"A person's processes are psychologically channelized by the way he anticipates events."
So Kelly could be saying that a fixed mind set can be changed to a growth mind set. When we come across a client who is limiting their own choices we immediately try to help them broaden their horizons by offering them options. We might not however have the time to get clients to write about themselves in the third person, for us then to sit down and analyse their constructs. I just cannot imagine it happening in the course of a busy working day.

Reflective Practice

On my last placement,which wasn't with Careers Scotland, one of the Employment Advisers got very hot under the collar because a young gent had just come in for her help, having failed to turn up a year ago for a Duke of Edinburgh Training Course that she had organised for him. She huffed and puffed and said what a time waster he was, and asked me to deal with him! On interviewing him I concluded that he was seriously seeking help as he was eighteen and doing nothing except playing his guitar all day. I also found him to be lacking in confidence. Knowing that the Adviser did not want to help him, I directed him to do things for himself. He had applied for college the year before and had not been given a place, so I advised him to apply again, and to keep himself busy he could apply for jobs. I gave him a lot more than that by way of guidance. The Employment Adviser went up to him and wanted to know what he was going to do now. After he was gone she was still arguing her case that he was a waste of time.

Then there was the very loud fifty year old man who announced, on arrival, that no-one would give him a job because they were saying that he was too old. It turned out that he had only worked two years of his entire life and that was in the infantry. In his spare time he had managed to seed eight children. However, he had been funded to do some training for a security job, and he had done it(a course that he said he passed with flying colours, but apparently they only give you Pass or Fail), and now he wanted to apply for the card that would make him licensed to do Security Work but needed funding for that. The organisation could easily have funded him, but the Adviser fobbed him off and when he had gone threw his paperwork behind her and said that there was no way he was getting funding from her!

My point is that I was really uncomfortable with what I thought was unprofessional practice. A doctor treats you no matter how many times you go to see them, don't they? The teenager should have been treated as if it was the first time he had come into the office. The dodgy older gentleman could have been employable for once in his life if he had been funded for his license, so it actually made sense to take him seriously. This could have been a changing point in his entire existence!

It is frightening to think that Advisers have this kind of power over their clients.

Sartre's Version of Freedom

Sartre was just carrying me away with his "optimism" when it occurred to me how unforgiving his theory is. There are no excuses for us. We are the sum of our actions. I felt myself being enthused by the thought that I could be anything and that in the end it was all down to me. But how true is that? When we are with our clients, aren't we constantly trying to identify the constraints upon them? We are always measuring them in some way or another. Sometimes where they live is identified as a constraint or a possible "excuse". In doing so we are considering, as Zola did, that environment has an effect on how we shape our lives. Some people cannot be what they want to be because they have to look after another person. Young people are restricted in many ways by the adults who are in charge of them. Other young people can soar into their desired path in life because their parents actively encourage them. Then there is money. If you have it, surely this is an advantage, an aid to freedom.

How wrong then was William Wallace if he did say, "You can take our lives but you cannot take our freedom?" For are we ever truly free?

As for religious constraints Sartre says, "...what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God." He is saying that belief in God or Gods distorts man's view of himself, and allows excuses for his behaviour. I agree with him on this point. One religion has the stance that God will judge us not by the sum of our actions but by the sum of our intentions. That is a comforting thought, but may well prevent what Pete called "self-efficacy".

Humanism and existentialism have their common ground usually bound up in aetheism and the belief that death is the end. I am not convinced however that existentialism would produce kindness and good deeds.