Mediating the self: the case of Sue.

This article is a response to the case study presented by M. C. Rehfuss (2003) regarding a client, Sue, who is experiencing discord in her career as a mediator. A conceptualization of the client and additional areas for client exploration are presented. Five steps of a constructivist career counseling approach are applied to the case to assist Sue with experiencing optimal functioning in her career through her proactive commitment to her life theme of mediation.

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There are many possible ways to work effectively with the client Sue; this article outlines one approach to the previously presented case (Rehfuss, 2003). An initial conceptualization of the client and her circumstances is presented first, followed by additional areas that should be explored to gain a broader picture of the client. Finally, a constructivist career counseling approach is applied to the case.

Initial Client Conceptualization

For Sue, mediation is not just a job but is also a way of life (Rehfuss, 2003, p. 291). Sue's current career as a divorce mediator is an extension of who she is, what she values, and how she sees her world. One of the major reasons that Sue is experiencing distress is because the request for her to be an arbitrator in divorce cases is, in many ways, equivalent to asking her to be someone that she is not. Much of the career intervention with Sue would focus on helping her to find ways to maintain her integrity while also managing the current realities of the divorce mediation field. Before focusing on interventions, it is necessary to develop a picture of Sue's method of functioning and how this affects her ability to cope with her current situation.

Sue's life reflects significant triumphs in the face of obstacles. Despite all of her difficulties, she has managed to earn a bachelor's degree with a concentration in conflict resolution and to build a successful divorce mediation practice. Sue's divorce mediation practice is currently being threatened by judges who will not refer cases to Sue as long as she will not arbitrate divorce cases at their demand. Sue is becoming increasingly anxious about her ability to maintain the balance she once found in her life, which was derived from her ability to make a living engaged in work that she finds meaningful and congruent with herself-perception. As the judges become more adamant about Sue arbitrating divorce cases, Sue has become more resolute that acting as an arbitrator is a compromise of her beliefs. She is considering leaving the divorce mediation profession.

Clearly, Sue views her options in this situation as dichotomous: (a) staying true to the belief that her role is to mediate divorce cases, which will inevitably lead to the end of her mediation practice, or (b) succumbing to the judges' desires for her to change her role to an arbitrator of divorce cases in order to maintain her practice. Sue states repeatedly during her narrative that she has adopted mediation as a way of life (see Rehfuss, 2003); however, in this situation she seems unable to mediate the conflict between what she believes is her role as a mediator and the judges' position that she should arbitrate cases. Although a relatively comprehensive picture of Sue has emerged from her narrative, there are other areas that warrant futher exploration.

Additional Areas for Exploration

Sue's narrative is quite extensive and provides a broad picture of her life experiences; however, additional information about Sue would help to ensure more appropriate career counseling interventions. Specifically, there are issues regarding culture and gender that should be discussed with this client.

Sue is a first-generation Slovakian American woman. During any counseling process, it is imperative that counselors explore and understand the culture of clients, because culture is central to the way in which individuals perceive themselves and construct their world. Client identity is formed not only in the individual and family context, but also in the cultural context (Sue, Ivey, & Pedersen, 1996). Therefore, it is important to explore the importance of Slovakian culture to Sue by discussing her cultural experience, assessing her acculturation status, and determining her level of ethnic identity development. In addition to examining Sue's experience of being Slovakian American, it is also important to address Sue's experience as a woman, because ethnicity and gender can interact to inform a client's experience (Robinson & Watt, 2000).

Sue refers to her refusal to buy into the "good old boys system" (Rehfuss, 2003, p.294) during her narrative, which indicates that she has some awareness that her career experience is being affected by gender issues. It would be appropriate to discuss with Sue how she sees gender-biased expectations affecting her career development (Betz, 1994; Cook, 1993). In addition, among first-generation immigrant women like Sue, culturally determined gender roles typically dictate that women maintain a strong commitment to family, as well as sustain a strong commitment to career pursuits (Lugris, 1997). Given this potential for career-family conflict, it would be important to explore with Sue how she will negotiate maintaining a successful career with being the sole parental provider (Cook, 1993).

Plans for Career Counseling

Sue believes that mediation is a way of life and not just a job for her. This kind of belief lends itself to the constructivist career counseling approach, because one of the underlying principles of the approach is that one's career is an extension of the self (Peavy, 1997). Constructivist career counseling is "a social context for making a client's self intelligible to that client and for modifying that client's narratives about self" (Savickas, 1995, p. 363). The goal is to help the client see the self (i.e., career) as a life project to be "dynamically constructed and deconstructed" (Peavy, 1997, p. 127) throughout the life span. Savickas outlined five steps for applying constructivist career counseling to career indecision. The following discussion of career intervention with Sue is based on Savickas's five steps but is modified slightly to apply to the issue of career maintenance, which is the focus of Sue's case.

When using constructivist career counseling, the counselor would first encourage the client to tell stories that would illuminate the client's life theme (Savickas, 1995). As noted earlier, Sue's stories reveal that mediation is her life theme. During the second step, the counselor would attempt to narrate the life theme to the client (Savickas, 1995). Here, the counselor would help Sue to understand that she conceptualizes herself and her social context through the theme of mediation. During this stage, Sue would have the opportunity to edit the life theme in collaboration with the counselor.

The fourth step involves the counselor and client working together to extend the client's life theme into the future (Savickas, 1995). In this instance, that would involve helping Sue to develop a vision for her career that reflects the mediation life theme. Through counseling, it would be desirable for Sue to recommit to her career as a divorce mediator and map out how she would like that recommitment to look. Another goal for this stage of counseling would be for Sue to understand that to promote optimal life functioning throughout her life span, her future career development shoul d reflect her dynamic life theme (Peavy, 1997).

During the third step, the counselor and client would discuss the current problem in the context of the life theme (Savickas, 1995). In this case, the counselor and Sue would discuss Sue's current problem within the context of mediation. The counselor would engage Sue in a dialogue that would help Sue to see that her current difficulty may be a result of her failure to use her life theme of mediation to address the current issue.

The last stage of constructivist career counseling would involve rehearsing the behavioral skills (Savickas, 1995) needed to change the current situation to one that is more congruent with the self and, ultimately, more satisfying to the individual. In this case, the counselor would work with Sue to help her find ways to implement her life theme of being a mediator. If Sue is to be true to her belief that she is a mediator in all of her life roles, then she must find a way to mediate the current situation. Sue would explore how she could mediate between being a divorce mediator and being a divorce arbitrator. She would also explore possible resources to help her shape the current conflict into a situation that is reflective of the person she wants to be. The resulting discussion would be used to develop and implement interventions that Sue could use to maintain and enhance her career as a divorce mediator.

One example of a behavioral intervention would be to encourage Sue to join a professional association for divorce mediators so that she could gain an awareness of other divorce mediators' experiences. Through these associations, Sue may be able to (a) broaden her understanding of her profession, (b) learn how others have coped with her current difficulty, (c) become aware of alternative work environments that are not as restrictive as her current workplace, and (d) gain the support and mentoring of other women who are divorce mediators.

Engaging in constructivist career counseling would help Sue to reconstruct her life narrative and engage in behaviors that are congruent with the reconstructed life theme. Ultimately, this change would allow Sue to experience over the life span optimal functioning and satisfaction in her career.

References

Betz, N. E. (1994). Basic issues and concepts in career counseling for women. In W. B. Walsh & S. H. Osipow (Eds.), Career counseling for women (pp. 1-41). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum

Cook, E. p. (1993). The gendered context of life: Implications for women's and men's career-life plans. The Career Development Quarterly, 41, 227-237.

Lugris, V. (1997). The career development of children of immigrants. In B. f. Okun (Series Ed.) & H. S. Farmer & Associates (Vol. Eds.), Women's mental health & development: Vol. 2. Diversity & women's career development: From adolescence to adulthood (pp. 187-197). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Peavy, R. V. (1997). A constructive framework for career counseling. In T. L. Sexton & B. L. Griffin (Eds.), constructivist thinking in counseling practice, research, and training (pp. 122-140). New York: Teachers College Press.

Rehfuss, M. C. (2003). Vocational identity at work: Mediating between essence and occupation. The Career Development Quarterly, 51, 291-295.

Robinson, T. L., & Watt, 5. (2000). "Where no one goes begging": Converging gender, sexuality, and religious diversity in counseling. In D. C. Locke, 3. E. Myers, & E. L. Herr (Eds.), The hand book of counseling (pp. 589-599). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Savickas, M. L. (1995). Constructivist counseling for career indecision. The Career Development Quarterly, 43, 363-373.

Sue, D. W., Ivey, A., & Pedersen, P. B. (1996). A theory of multicultural counseling and therapy. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Natasha A. Mitchell Department of Counseling and Personnel Services, University of Maryland, College Park. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Natasha A. Mitchell, Department of Counseling and Personnel Services, University of Maryland, 3214 Benjamin Building, College Park, MD 20740 (e-mail: [e-mail])