Abstract:
In this article I report on how conscious knowledge could be connected with subconscious advice through career
construction counselling to resolve the career choice indecision of a postgraduate psychology student. The participant was
purposively selected from a number of people attending a course in narrative career counselling. An explanatory, single case
study design was adopted, and a qualitative approach was employed as the research framework. A career construction
counselling intervention was used to generate data that was analysed according to the analytic style recommended by
Savickas. The findings demonstrate the value of this kind of intervention in enabling the participant to reflect critically on
key facets of his career-life story. Doing so revealed the difference between his conscious view of a possible future careerlife
trajectory and his subconsciously regulated perspective on that trajectory. The findings also reveal the value of career
construction counselling in helping the participant proceed from functioning as a social actor displaying motivated agency to
furthering his career-life story as an autobiographical author. Future research should focus on larger groups of participants
and include different assessment instruments to examine the longitudinal influence of the intervention described here, in
group contexts with diverse groups of young people.
