The focus of constructivist counseling is on how people experience the world and make sense of that experience. Counseling strategies under the umbrella of constructivist approaches such as narrative, solutions-focused, and other postmodern approaches share thepremise that clients create their own reality This article describes how college students' problems can be conceptualized and the counseling approach crafted from a constructivist perspective that activates client resources to create more useful personal constructs and develop new solutions to client concerns. lkto case studies of traditional-aged clients are presented to illustrate practical applications of constructivist counseling.
Postmodern approaches to counseling are being used widely and creatively in counseling practice, training, and supervision. This is exemplified by the fact that inJuly 1997 at the Twelfth International Personal Construct Psychology Congress more than 150 counselors, college teachers, and researchers from more than 15 countries assembled to present and discuss contemporary applications of constructivism. Papers were delivered on diverse topics that included couple's constructivist therapy, treating chronic depression, identity formation, assessment of change in counseling, and constructivist supervision. Constructivism reflects a movement from modernism to a postmodern epistemology signaling a paradigm shift for counseling. This change coincides with an erosion in the trust of universal and scientific foundations of objective knowledge and an increasing acceptance of the multiplicity of human perspectives.
Sexton (1 997) suggested that this paradigm change stems from a disenchantment with (a) contemporary theories of causation, (b) the validity of epistemological (i.e., theories of knowledge and knowing) beliefs, and (c) ontological (i.e., nature of reality) assumptions central to the scientific method. Constructivism uses concepts of second-order (i.e., core or structural) change and rejects modernist and rationalist assumptions regarding what makes counseling effective (Lyddon, 1990). Under the broad umbrella of constructivist