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SocioDynamic Counselling: A constructivist perspective

by R. Vance Peavy

259 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #97-0010; ISBN 1-55212-094-5; US$26.00, C$40.00, EUR26.00, £18.10

This book is one of the first counselling books to be written from a constructivist perspective. Part I contains theory; Part II describes constructivist counselling practice. Contains 1999 revisions.

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about the book     about the author     table of contents and preface     catalogue info    

About the Book

This book breaks new ground for counsellors working with clients in times of uncertainty and change. It describes the counsellor's work from a constructivist perspective and introduces valuable counselling tools to use in planning and coping with unpredictable events in worklife and in social life. The book suggests how counsellors can help clients construct meaningful futures and actions and how they can move toward the making of more resilient selves.

The book gives counsellors many suggestions about how they can work directly with the client's life-experience to move toward useful and personally meaningful solutions. The book is written in an inspiring style and stresses how counsellors and clients can cooperate to find innovative ways to navigate difficult life situations.

The author provides readers various clues on how to unlock the 'iron cage' of positivist thinking and how to step out into the fresh air of choice, responsibility, action, meaning, empowerment and authentically co-operative relationships in counselling. Readers are brought into contact with 'cultural sensibility' rather than individualistic, psychological theory as a guide to good counselling.

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About the Author

Vance Peavy was Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria. He was a Canadian authority on counselling and the inventor of Constructivist Career Counselling in Canada and the inventor of SocioDynamic Counselling, as well. For his research and professional contributions to counselling he received the Canadian Guidance and Counselling Association's award for Outstanding Professional Contribution to Counselling in Canada in 1988. In 1997 he was made an honorary member of the Swedish Counsellors' Association for his contribution to counsellor education in Sweden. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology. Vance died during the summer of 2002. A scholarship fund has been established in his name.

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Table of Contents, Preface and Intro

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Section I: CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORY & COUNSELLING

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION AND FIRST STEPS

• My perspective as author
• So what is counselling anyway?
• Introducing a new vocabulary into counselling discourse
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 2 A CONSTRUCTIVIST FRAME FOR UNDERSTANDING

• Major transformations affecting the lives of individuals
• Building a constructivist framework for informing the practice of counselling in the 21st century
• Constructivist principles for counselling
• Table of constructivist principles for counsellors
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 3 CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL LIFE AS A CONTEXT FOR COUNSELLING

• Alterations in social life - can counsellors help?
• Choice and decision
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 4 Postmodern Vocational Development and Counselling: Constructing Possible Futures

• Introduction
• Ten critical reflections on social life transformations at the onset of the 21st century
• Summarizing reflection
• Ten critical reflections on the transformation of vocational counselling and development
• Concluding reflections
• References and Endnotes

Section II: CONSTRUCTIVIST-BASED COUNSELLING PRACTICE

• Foreword to Section II

Chapter 5 ENTERING THE LIFE-SPACE

• Life-space: meaning and nuances
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 6 LIFE-SPACE EXPLORATION AND DESCRIPTION

• Dialogical conversation
• Questions which elicit life experience descriptions, distinctions and meaning
• Metaphors and counselling
• Life-space mapping
• Diagram: Life-space maps for Mark
• Explication of critical life experiences
• Counterfactual experimentation with the unique

Chapter 7 WORKING WITH STORIES

• Practical tools in working with stories
• Procedure I: Extend empathic understanding.
• Procedure II: Mapping influences of the problem on the client and vice versa
• Procedure III: Use mindfulness as a counselling stance when listening to stories
• Procedure IV: Work with the client in a cooperative way to edit (reconstruct)(re-author)(make) revised or new stories which are preferred alternatives to old stories
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 8 DECIDING, PLANNING, AND CO-CONSTRUCTING PERSONAL PROJECTS

• The importance of personal projects and activities
• Decision-making and planning
• Tasks of sensible decision-making
• Tasks of sensible planning

Chapter 9 A Constructivist counsellor at work: A Narrative Account

• Mikes meets a constructivist counsellor
• Some frequently asked questions [FAQs] about New Look counselling
• Final comments

Chapter 10 GROUP COUNSELLING: A CONSTRUCTIVIST GROUP COUNSELLING ACTIVITY FOR IDENTIFYING PERSONAL STRENGTHS

• Assumptions underlying constructivist group work
• General guidelines for conducting constructivist groups
• Working rules
• Use a vocabulary of proficiency
• Group activity for identifying meaningful experiences and personal strengths
• Step l: Counsellor orients participants to PSIA
• Step 2: The counsellor models a PSIA
• Step 3: Deciding which of two paths to take
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 11 CONSTRUCTIVIST SUPERVISION: A SOCIODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE

• Introduction
• Constructivist supervision--general considerations
• Modernist models of supervision
• Constructivist supervision
• Standpoints on constructivist supervision: Voicing reflections on lived experience
• Vance's standpoint as a constructivist supervisor
• Clinical wisdom
• Life space mapping: A core supervision activity
• Mary Lou's standpoint as a supervisee in constructivist supervision
• Sandra's standpoint as a supervisee in constructivist supervision
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 12 ON THE WAY TO BECOMING A CONSTRUCTIVIST COUNSELLOR--OR , "GETTING READY FOR THE 21st CENTURY"

• Constructivist counselling as a liberating and innovative framework
• Assessment and the place of tests in constructivist counselling
• What about the place of data and information in constructivist counselling?
• Culture-centred counselling
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 13 WHEN STRANGERS MEET: MAJORITY CULTURE COUNSELLORS AND MINORITY CULTURE CLIENTS

• Introduction
• On the wrong track
• The problem is bigger than counselling
• Revising counselling and counsellor education to gain more cultural sensibility
• Thesis I
• Thesis II
• Thesis III
• Thesis IV
• Recommendations for the training of counsellors who counsel with minority group members
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 14 COUNSELLING FIRST NATIONS PEOPLE

• Personal notes
• Note on terminology
• What I attempt to do in this chapter
• Aboriginal culture and counselling
• The time is now
• Practical guidelines in First Nations counselling
• Bi-cultural counselling
• Eight bi-cultural counselling principles
• The effective counsellor for First Nations clients
• Different interpretations of counselling conversation
• Theories of counselling and counselling with First Nations people
• Principles of a First Nations world-view
• Traditional healing
• Concluding thoughts
• References and Endnotes

Chapter 15 Gitxan Natural Help

• Preface
• Introduction
• Research basis for this chapter
• Research questions
• Terms used in my research
• Brief review of literature
• The co-researchers
• Thoughts about being seen as a helper
• How they came about to be a helper
• Experiences that influenced their becoming a helper
• What they do as helpers
• Concluding comments
• My reflections
• Bibliography and Selected References

Appendix OVERVIEW OF SOCIODYNAMIC COUNSELLING

• Sociodynamic counselling: a constructivist form of counselling designed for helping people navigate 21st century social life
• What some clients and counsellors have said about their counselling experience with constructivist-oriented (sociodynamic) counselling

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PREFACE

Constructivist thinking is rapidly progressing as a valuable way of describing and understanding humans--their thinking, their feeling, their actions. Constructivist thinking is well established in the so-called 'hard' sciences. It is widely used in anthropology and in the arts. It is now emerging as a new way for sociologists to understand the objects of their study. As a philosophy, constructivism goes back at least to the 15th century.

In psychology, constructivist thinking has been kept on the sidelines in North America until recently by behaviourism, cognitivism, and humanistic psychology. In recent times it has become more and more apparent to serious thinkers that the logical positivist foundations of behaviourism and cognitivism are flawed and no longer serve as a legitimatizing base for counselling and other "helping" professions.

The pioneering work of Piaget, Vygotsky, Bhaktin, L'ontev, Kelly, Bruner, and others such as Kenneth Gergen provides a contemporary constructivist perspective for psychology. Recently the work of Michael Mahoney, Vittorio Guidano, the Neimieyers and many therapist-writers associated with systems and family therapies have opened up psychotherapy to constructivist contributions.

Kenneth Gergen has been a strong intellectual force in presenting a rationale and many papers on social constructionism. He has done much to develop this "relational psychology." Peter Ossorio and his "descriptive psychology" at the University of Colorado as well as Rom Harre and his associates at Oxford and other British scholars such as John Shotter have been moving psychology in a constructivist direction.

In the last several decades constructivist thinking has become an increasingly valuable frame of reference for various family therapies, narrative therapy, and some forms of post-rational cognitive therapies. Now it is moving into general counselling and into career counselling especially. An example is the new book on Constructivist Counselling: Theory, Research, Training, and Practice edited by T. Sexton and B. Griffin.

I have another book Konstruktivisk Vejledning: Teori og Metode (1998) published in Danish. We can expect others shortly. Much of the newer thinking in qualitative research methods is also springing from a constructivist framework. It is not surprising since those who take the time to understand and begin to utilize constructivist thinking in their clinical, counselling and research work find it to be enormously liberating and in many ways inspirational to both practitioners and to clients.

Of course there will be a struggle to bring constructivist thinking to new generations of students and clients. Several generations of academics who were socialized into positivism will have to live out their days, unwilling to shed the mantle of the positivist perspective even though as Karl Popper remarked, "It is a way of thinking that is dominant but dead." One of the great virtues of constructivist thinking, however, is that it does not get into disputations about "I am better than you are." Rather, it says, "here are some new and different ways of understanding humans and their societies. Try them out and see for yourself."

As you will notice, I use the title SocioDynamic Counselling for this book. For years I have worked on these ideas and in due time I wish to clearly lay claim to a counselling perspective under the trademark SocioDynamic which will identify it as a Canadian invention. SocioDynamic counselling is constructivist-based and also incorporates ideas and knowledge from other disciplines. I want to do what I can to establish the constructivist way of counselling.

You might be interested to know that "Socio" comes from a Greek root meaning 'together', 'companion', 'social' and I use it to establish that this form of counselling is at least as much a relational or social form of helping as it is individualistic. Dynamic also comes from a Greek root, dynamiko, which means "characterized by continuous change or movement"; and "characterized by an aesthetic equilibrium of parts which otherwise are unstable when considered separately." I have come to understand that we humans are social beings, that we are continuously changing, and that at our best, we are a holistic, aesthetic equilibrium. A life well-lived is a work of art, more like a poem or dance than a machine or collection of disparate traits and parts. I hope to make this understanding come to life in the work of the constructivist counsellor.

In the writing of this book I have been inspired by the hundreds of clients whom I have listened to and who have taught me much about human existence in its diverse forms. I have also learned much from the many intelligent and creative graduate students for whom I have been mentor over the past thirty years. I am also indebted to the good intelligence and friendship of Mary-Baird Carlsen, Greg Neimeyer, Timo Vahamottonnen, Peter Ossorio, and many others from whom I have learned. Perhaps most of all I am forever deepened by my own "Uncle" and great teacher of silence, deep listening and respect, --my Cheyenne/Ute Uncle John whose grace and presence is never far away.

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Catalogue Information

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