ABSTRACT
Adler’s Individual Psychology offers a perspective on vocational behavior that enriches the classic career-counseling model. The present chapter contains an elaboration of this assertion and a presentation of methods and materials that career counselors can use to bring the Adlerian perspective to their work. The chapter begins with a review of the strengths and weaknesses of the most widely used approach to career counseling: matching persons to occupations. What follows is a discussion of five ways in which Adler’s Individual Psychology elaborates this matching model to be more useful to counselors. The remaining two-thirds of the chapter contain a presentation of Individual Psychology materials and methods specifically designed for Adlerian career counseling or, more precisely, career-style counseling. The presentation of career-style counseling is divided into three sections. The first section consists of a description of a structured interview that counselors use to collect data about a client’s career style; the second section holds ideas on how counselors think about these data to understand the client’s career style; and the third section contains a description of a model for career-style counseling. This is followed by further illustrations and activities using this method.
