Applying life-design counselling to young adults experiencing unmastered developmental tasks

Abstract

A great number of people present with unresolved traumatic experiences and/or unmastered developmental tasks and it has been suggested (McLeod, 2018; Maree, 2021a) that problems during the developmental stages may have a negative influence on personality, thus exerting a significant psychological impact on individuals’ career trajectory and their career adaptability. The resolution or reconstruction of these unmastered tasks into meaningful experiences was expected to contribute to enhanced career adaptability, psychological growth, and positive developmental change (Maree, 2021b). This study aimed to answer the primary research question, ‘How does life-design counselling influence young adults’ (between the ages of 17 and 29) mastery of unresolved developmental tasks and enable them to flourish in their career lives?’. A qualitative, mixed-methods case study research design was implemented and constituted identical pre- and post-intervention data-gathering phases as well as an adapted life-design counselling intervention which included the Career Interest Profile Version 7 (Maree, 2017a) and life-design intervention strategies (Savickas, 2015) such as structured and semi-structured interviews, career genograms, collages, and lifelines. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019) was applied to analyse the data along with the assistance of Atlas.ti (v23) software. Results demonstrated significant positive psychological change for the majority of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and occupational developmental tasks. Participants furthermore demonstrated increased application of metacognitive skills, increased awareness of their internal psychological characteristics and well-being, and they were able to identify the external factors which supported and influenced their psychological well-being and career trajectories post-intervention.