Guindon+&+Hanna+Article


 * Coincidence, Happenstance, Serendipity, Fate or the Hand of God: Case Studies in Synchronicity **
 * **Purpose of the article**: Explore the phenomenon of synchronicity in career counseling through the presentation of synchronistic themes in three field-based studies.
 * When each client embraced his or her authentic self, each found meaningful life's work through an unexpected experience with synchronicity.
 * **A Philosophical context for career counseling:**
 * In the **HOLISTIC** approach--> The key to what career counselors do lies in the fact that whatever specific techniques they may use, they assist clients to make therapeutic change in order to find a fuller meaning in life.
 * By integrating the more objective indicators of interests, skills, values, needs and personality with the subjective, transcendent, and spiritual dimension, career counselors can practice from a holistic framework.
 * In the **EXISTENTIALIST** view--> meaning in life is critical to well-being. Career development across the life span is no less than a search for meaning.
 * (Many clients come in blocked by their own limitations)
 * Jung (1933) considered that those blockages "indicate a need for individuation."
 * (Individuation is the process through which we risk becoming who we really are and the aim is to remove from the self the false wrappings of the persona).
 * Through process such as the clarification of interests, values, skills, and personality traits and the examination of life roles, clients begin to individuate, to discover their authentic selves, and to identify their sense of meaning.
 * This is a process that extends beyond linear, first order change
 * Through the process of discovering authentic selves, **second-order change** can be achieved.
 * Second-order change-- profound restructuring of the self, of one's way of being, or of one's way of viewing or perceiving the world.
 * It is transcendental and manifests in insight -- the "aha" experience and directs psychological acts or metacognitive acts, or both, toward awareness, thought, and affect.
 * It may be at the point of transcendence when clients gain insight, have come to trust their authentic selves, and decide to seek congruent life's work.
 * **Synchronicity-->**Accounts for striking and inexplicable occurrences that link two or more events, usually an inner though or feeling and an outer event. It manifests through related patterns of chance that are connected through the sharing of a common meaning-**__NOT__** because one event caused the other.
 * **(3) forms:**
 * Coincidence of a subjective psychic content with a correspondingly objective process that is perceived to take place simultaneously.
 * Coincidence of a subjective psychic state with a dream or vision, "which later turns out to be a more or less faithful reflection of a 'synchronistic' objective event that took place more or less simultaneously, but at a distance"
 * The coincidence of a subjective psychic state with a dream or vision in which the "synchronistic" objective event perceived takes place in the future and is represented in the present by the dream or vision that corresponds to it.
 * Implications for Career Counseling (Guindon & Hanna, 2002,p 205-6)
 * Counselors need to have a more holistic view
 * help clients self explore on a deeper level
 * Embrace chance events as having meaning in client's life
 * engage in synchronistically thinking

Understanding through case studies: Dan-Holland code was consistent with career; wanted to own a small town press; needs to find a way to accomplish goal despite seeming out of reach; coincidence of a friend who has a printing press only 15 miles away. "coincidence of subjective psychic content"

Sarah- feelings of inadequacy/low self-esteem; current director of youth enrichment program; testing confirmed mismatched career; Sarah prayed for resolution and had a recurrent dream/vision; interview for new job was the same 'man in black' from her dream. "coincidence of subjective state and a dream/vision"

Billie- made a mistake in choosing career field; investigated other positions in academic settings which led to an idea of having a career in financial aid; described dream she had before her husband died about a horse and river; interviewed for a position literally across the river in her state like her stream and the school colors were the same as the horses in the dream; she attributed this to her "destiny and fate and to a belief in a god that watched over her"

Similar article: Mitchell, K., Levin, A., and Krumboltz, J. (1999). Planned happenstance: Constructing unexpected career opportunities. //Journal of Counseling and Development, 77(//2), 115-124. The article I found focused on capitalizing chance in career development. Mitchell, Levin, and Krumboltz (1999) conducted a literature review on the occurrence of happenstance in career development and how to use this chance as a positive opportunity. All authors recognized that no one could predict the future with accuracy. Instead of forcing the future, one should allow it to happen by happenstance. When planning career development, counselors do not recognize chance factors. This recognition created the planned happenstance theory. The planned happenstance theory focuses on using unplanned events for further learning opportunities (Mitchell et al., 1999). The theory allows clients to be open minded and willing to accept chance that comes into their lives and use it to better their development. The proposition of the planned happenstance theory is similar to Krumboltz’s social learning theory. Both allow personal differences in characteristics and recognize environmental differences. This allows clients to be undecided and open to gaining insight about their career path that lead to new discoveries. Nowadays clients are not in “cookie cutter” form. Everyone is different and we need to accept these differences and find a way to make their differences positive. Most would look at the unplanned future as daunting but with the planned happenstance theory it can create a sense of security by planning for the unknown.