Innovating Counseling for Self- and Career Construction: Connecting Conscious Knowledge with Subconscious Insight

This book sets out to provide context for innovating counseling for self- and career construction. It gives readers insight into the theory underlying an innovative, integrative qualitative-quantitative approach to career counseling.

Three key ideas recur throughout the book. First, the idea of not dispensing “advice” to people—instead, enabling them to advise themselves. Second, the idea of listening for instead of to people’s stories to help them choose and construct careers and themselves and shape their career identities. Third, the idea of helping people connect what they know about themselves consciously with what they are aware of subconsciously. 

The book confronts some of the main challenges posed by Work 4.0 on the workplace but also foreshadows the imminent advent of Work 5.0. It endeavors to promote career counselors’ ability to help people “thrive” at a time when many speculate that work itself is at risk, occupational contexts no longer “hold” workers in the way they used to, and the coronavirus pandemic is disrupting the workplace.

Prof. Kobus Maree's interests are counselling for self- and career construction and life design counselling. He is past editor of a number of scholarly journals and has received multiple awards, including the Stals Prize for exceptional research and contributions to psychology, the Psychological Society of South Africa’s (PsySSA) Award for Excellence in Science, the Chancellor’s Medal for Teaching and Learning from the University of Pretoria, and Exceptional Achiever Award. He has read keynote papers at 25+ international conferences, presented numerous invited workshops at conferences across the world, and has spent a lot of time abroad as visiting professor at various universities. He was awarded a fellowship of the IAAP (2014) and PsySSA’s Fellow Award (2017), which is a Lifetime Award in recognition of a person who has made exceptional contributions to psychology.