Week 11 - March 29th
Chaos Theories
Crites (1969) identified three broad overlapping eras to describe the evolution of career and development theory building which are: Observational, Empirical, and Theoretical.
Theoretical Era can be subdivided into two categories labeled modern and postmodern. Modern theories began in the 1950s with postmodern emerging in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Name of Theory: Constructivist Theory
Dates: Postmodern Theory--emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s
Theorist: Robert Pryor & Jim Bright
Main Concept/Ideas:
Chaos is a new way of looking at human behavior that has emerged from the disciplines of economics, mathematics, biology, and physics. It offers a different way of understanding the complexity and uncertainty of human development in general and career development specifically. According to Briggs & Peat (1989) is that it moves us away form a reductionist view of human behavior to a view that emphasizes wholeness and change.
Nature controlled by human thought is the essence of the
reductionist dream… Against this trend
(toward isolation of parts and systems) rises the young science of chaos, wholeness
and change—a new insistence on the interrelationships of things, an awareness
of the essential predictableness of nature and of the uncertainties in our
science descriptions.
The chaos theory of career development views individuals as being
complex dynamic systems. As individuals
grow and develop they are subject to many different and continually changing
life challenges. As their career
development unfolds, they find themselves often dealing with such challenges as
unplanned events, nonlinear change, unpredictability, and continual change.
The Concept of Attraction
Attraction is defined as a process used by individuals to organize
a coherent self and then maintain and sustain it when change occurs. The process can he subdivided into four types
of attraction called attractors. They
are labeled point attractor, pendulum attractor,
torus attractor, and strange
attractor. They describe different patterns
of behavior used to respond to changing life challenges.
Point Attractor
Individuals who use the point attractor pattern of behavior often
focus on choosing the best occupation based in a match between their personalities,
abilities, and interests. The extreme they
have been seen as having “tunnel vision, exclusive preoccupation, over
confidence in decision making, fixation on a choice option, ideological or
goal-dominated thinking and/or obsessional or fearful behavior. They may also discount the role of change and
uncertainty in the lives.
Pendulum Attractor
The attractor describes swings in behavior. Individuals who use this pattern of behavior
are likely to engage in dichotomous either—or thinking. They may have rigid beliefs.
Clients in the grip of pendulum thinking will
rarely be able to generate win-win scenarios and solutions will present
“balance” as the desirable outcome may be aggravating the situation by
attempting to stop the pendulum at the lowest point: Point of compromise is neither conflicting need
is appropriately met, thereby aggravating both.
Torus Attractor
This pattern of behavior us described as “routine, habitual, and
predictable thinking and behavior.”
Individuals who use this pattern try to control their lives by
organizing and classifying people and things.
The like consistency and routine.
Fear, insecurity, self-consciousness uncertainty,
worry about failure, desires to “play it safe” are sources of motivation that
frequently constrain those in the torus attractor. When the illusion of their control is
shattered by a major negative unplanned event, they typically try to regress to
an earlier mode of coping, refuse to consider the consequences of change, den
or hope that it does not affect them, or simply lose all confidence in their ability
to respond to the new set of circumstances confronting them.
Strange Attractor
Point, pendulum, and torus attractors are closed systems—meaning
that individuals who use these patterns of behavior tend to have a strong sense
of control. They like order and
stability. Open systems thinking
(strange attractor) recognizes “the possibility of change being non-linear in
the sense that a small difference may result in every major reconfiguration of
the system”. This thinking promotes the
ability for individuals to adopt and grow.
Chance is not seen as the opposite order but as part of one’s existence. (Pryor & Bright, 2011)
Chaos Theory and Spirituality
The chaos theory emphasizes the importance of integrating
spirituality into our conceptualizations of career development. Pryor and Bright described five dimensions of
spirituality and career development that need to be considered in the work of
career counselors. The first dimension
is connection, which focuses on how
we are interconnected with the human community, the world, and the
universe. Second is purpose with its focus on “humans’ sense of meaning, purpose and
significance”. Third is transcendence with its emphasis on the
idea that there is a greater power beyond our understanding. The fourth dimension is harmony with its intention to “how e3verythiing fits together into
an intelligible whole.” Finally, fifth
is calling, or the idea that individuals
often perceive that what they are doing with their lives is the result of being
called.
Chaos Theory and Shiftwork
Chaos theorists have observed that change can occur in systems
with gradually or very quickly with the effect of change is to reconfigure the
system. When change occurs, it is called
a phase shift because the system will have changed from its original
configuration. Pryor and Bright (2011)
used the term shiftwork to describe
the work of career counselors helping clients deal with these phase shifts or changes in their lives,
however and whenever change occurs. They
describe 11 phase shifts care counselors need to pay attention to:
Shift 1: From Perdition to Prediction and Pattern
Making
Shift 2: From Plans to Plans and Planning
Shift 3: From Narrowing Down to Being Focused on
Openness
Shift 4: From Control to Controlled Flexibility
Shift 5: From Risk as Failure to Risk as Endeavor
Shift 6: From Probabilities to Probably Probabilities
Shift 7: From Goals, Roles and Routines to Meaning,
Mattering and Black Swans
Shift 8: From Informing to Informing and Transforming
Shift 9: From Normative Thinking to Normative and
Scalable Thinking
Shift 10: From Knowing in Advance to Living with
Emergence
Shift 11: From Trust as Control to Trust as Faith
Implications of the Chaos Theory of Career Development for the
Practice of Career Counseling
How are these 11 phase shifts
to be dealt with in career counseling?
Bright and Pryor (2008) suggested that career counselors use the
following four-step process:
1.
Identify, where operative,
clients’ closed system thinking
strategies.
2.
Help clients to realize that such efforts at control, certainty,
knowledge, and predictability are crucially limited.
3.
Assist clients to recognize and utilize the stabilities and
surprises of living in the strange attractor.
4.
Enable people to be able to both perceive the dimensions of
complexity and acknowledge and effectively negotiate uncertainty, change, and
chance in constructive ways to fulfill their deepest aspirations.
Links to Articles or Videos:
https://careersintheory.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/applied-chaos/
