L. S. Gottfredson (1986) described the risks faced by many social groups as well as the attributes of such groups that may impede their career development, including low intelligence, poor education, poverty, cultural isolation, functional limitations, and status as a primary care giver or economic provider (see Table 1-1). Gottfredson defined the clinical tasks as the accurate assessment of such risks, and the use of effective treatments to overcome environmental constraints and barriers.
Gottfredson (1981) also argued that counselors typically underestimate the effects of social constraints in designing their treatments, and suggested that more potent interventions were required to overcome the limiting effects of gender on career development. Regardless of whether one agrees with Gottfredson, she did illustrate that social constraints modify career aspirations by forcing compromises in the level or field of choice and in lowering unrealistically high career goals.
Compromise versus Persistence in Career Behavior
Ginzberg (Ginzberg, 1984; Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Axelrad, & Herma, 1951), and to a certain extent Super (Super, 1956; Super & Overstreet, 1960) and Tiedeman (Tiedeman & Ohara, 1963) as well, argued that when social reality produces changes in the career aspirations of adolescents and young adults, compromise is the most frequent response. Compromise was also an explicit factor in L. S. Gottfredson's (1981) theory. It is now clear that most adolescents overshoot in their career aspirations (L. S. Gottfredson & Becker, 1981) and that the social environment forces some degree of alteration in their plans. Gottfredson (1981) argued that occupational interests are more likely to be compromised when faced with an environmental constraint than are gender role or status, which are acquired developmentally earlier. Two recent studies (Holt, 1989; Taylor & Pryor, 1985) also suggested that occupational prestige level is indeed less likely to be compromised than occupational interests. Gender role and interests are so intertwined that the compromise process involving the two may be highly complex.
Super (1956) argued that although compromise is an appropriate term to apply to the adaptation process that occurs when reality is encountered late in development (i.e., in adolescence), synthesis is more correctly used to describe what takes place when the individual first interacts with the environment and begins to differentiate the "self from the "other." The influence of the social environment is strongest when an adolescent tries to implement a career aspiration, and especially when an adolescent with a poorly differentiated image of self confronts the reality of the labor force. The shock can force such individuals to reevaluate and reformulate their career plans.
Astin and Panos (1969) identified a compromise commonly made by college science majors as the "science to non-science shift"; Holland (1985b) called the process of adapting to reality "searching"; and Tiedeman and Ohara (1963) referred to the dual processes of differentiation and integration. Regardless of the term applied to the iterative process of exploring and adapting personal career aspirations to the social reality, most clients, especially younger ones, can anticipate some painful reconsideration of their career dreams in the face of marketplace realities. Tiedeman and Ohara (1963) thought that most of the reconsideration occurred in the critical transition from anticipation to implementation, after the reality of the marketplace had been encountered.
Rather than emphasizing the extent of career compromises, Tiedeman has focused on an individual's force of will, or ego strength, as the critical determinant of eventual career choice. Tiedeman and Miller-Tiedeman (1984) carried this view to its logical conclusion in suggesting that there is a personal career reality that is distinct from a common career reality. The personal reality is that "thought, behavior or direction that the individual feels is right for him or her, even though someone else may advise that it will never work" (p. 295). Since there are a limited number of jobs in all markets, the common reality is determined by any limits operating when an individual is implementing a career decision. This conflict between the client's aspiration and the labor market's constraints is often the crucial (if hidden) therapeutic issue in career counseling. It would be incorrect, however, to assume that compromise is always proper for a client. There are many examples of individuals who persisted in attempting to implement a desired career aspiration in the face of great odds. This persistent search behavior is a hallmark of the successful career client. Persistence to the point of psychological distress is unwise-but a lack of persistence results in too much compromise.
No studies have shown convincingly that career interventions that foster persistence cannot overcome some of the more severe social constraints facing a client. In fact some evidence indicates that welfare clients who experience severe constraints will be quite successful in finding work after a behavioral intervention is specifically designed to promote a persistent job search (Azrin, Phillip, Thienes-Hontos, 8c Besalel, 1980). Common sense, however, tells us that a high proportion of the population cannot overcome such serious barriers no matter how potent the intervention, since the limited availability of many desirable careers must surely dampen unrealistic aspirations. It is still not known the extent to which and under what circumstances career interventions might be able to surmount social constraints.
Tiedeman, Ginzberg, L. S. Gottfredson, and Vondracek, Lerner, and Schulenberg (1986) have all defined the process of career choice as a dynamic interplay between personal aspirations and social reality in which two opposing but more or less continuous forces (differentiation-integration, optimization-compromise, circumscription-compromise, and affordance-selection, respectively) determine the outcome. Osipow (1983) argued that individuals make small serial choices in which every minor decision opens a chain of new options and closes off others, much like the capillary system in the human body. Each persistence or compromise behavior creates or eliminates new choices or options, and the cumulative effect of these serial decisions is a career. In sum, most individuals must make compromises between personal aspirations and the reality of the labor force. The nature of these compromises is not yet clear, but appears to involve occupational status and ability, gender role, and interests. The majority of the compromises seem to be made by age thirty (L. S. Gottfredson & Becker, 1981).
