Traditional career counseling methods are based on the assumption that matching clients' interests, values, abilities. and aptitudes to a suitable occupation will result in opportunities for self-actualization and personal expression. However, vocational psychology tends to neglect a critical extra-individual factor: the nature of the opportunity structure. True career choice may be the experience of only a small proportion of clients. Vocational psychology has focused almost exclusively on individuals to the neglect of social, economic, and political realities.
My client Pedro is a 19-year-old with spastic quadriplegia, cognitive deficits, unintelligible speech, and severe emotional and behavior problems. He comes from an economically disadvantaged immigrant family and has lost his father to suicide. He and his mother are s o physically abusive with each other that, on one occasion, the police were called to the house and Pedro was taken to a psychiatric ward in handcuffs.
Pedro was referred to me for career counseling because he has already completed an extra year of high school and needs to establish a postsecondary direction for himself. He cannot stay at home during the day because he needs physical care, and his mother is out working, cleaning people's houses. Local colleges are unwilling to take him as a student because of his physical care needs and his disruptive behavior. He had a successful work experience placement during high school: it involved folding papers 2 hours per week with a machine specially designed for him. He says that he wants to be a computer programmer. His occupational therapist believes that he is capable of paid employment, but concedes that he may need a "specially designed job."
The traditional trait-and-factor approach, and its newer incarnation as the "Person x Environment fit" approach would direct me to assess Pedro's interests, personality. values, abilities, and aptitudes, then help him match these attributes to a suitable occupation. Such