Unconscious determinants of career choice and burnout: theoretical model and counseling strategy

✍ Scribed by Ayala Malach-Pines; Oreniya Yafe-Yanai

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 954 KB
• Volume: 38
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-0787
• DOI: 10.1002/j.2161-1920.2001.tb00499.x

✦ Synopsis

A psychodynamic‐existential perspective is proposed as a theoretical model that explains career burnout and serves as a basis for a counseling strategy. According to existential theory, the root of career burnout lies in people's need to find existential significance in their life and their sense that their work does not provide it. The reason that people choose a particular career is explained by psychoanalytic theory, which attributes it to significant childhood experiences, family dynamics, and familial vocational choices. Two detailed and 4 brief cases are presented to demonstrate the application of the psychoanalytic‐existential approach to career counseling that is sought as a result of burnout.