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The Major Contribution aims to provide interrelated articles that examine how counseling psychology's past and the complex world we live and work in bear on our professional understanding of human strengths and positive life outcomes. In this article, the authors examine the historical underpinnings of the positive in psychology, analyze the focus on the positive in counseling psychology scholarship through the decades (via a content analysis), and review scholarship that has shaped the strength-based work of professionals throughout applied psychology. The content analysis of a random selection of 20% (N = 1,135) of the articles published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (JCP), The Counseling Psychologist (TCP), the Journal of Career Assessment (JCA), and the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development (JMCD) revealed that about 29% have a positive focus. This article calls attention to the positive in counseling psychology, and the authors encourage its members to reaffirm its unique positive focus by focusing more on strength in practice and research. Downloaded from tinct streams of influence: (a) the vocational guidance initiative, (b) advances in psychometrics and psychological testing, and (c) the growth of the psychotherapy movement (Super, 1955;Watkins, 1983). During the field's transition from vocational guidance to counseling psychology, Super (1955) commented that counseling psychology's hallmark was its concern with "hygiology, with the normalities of even abnormal persons" (p. 5). Over the course of its development as a specialty, counseling psychology has held to a philosophical focus and a professional emphasis on identifying and developing personal and social resources and on helping individuals more effectively use these resources. "This emphasis, in contrast to a focus on weakness and pathology, has remained constant in the profession over the years and still underlies the work of counseling psychologists" (Fretz, 1985, p. 48). Perhaps more than any other factor, this enduring philosophy of counseling psychology-its deliberate focus on individual strengths and assets-has helped maintain and ensure its integrity and identification as a specialty within professional psychology. ) developed a process of focused, goal-oriented counseling to help college students with their needs-one that related measured traits and factors with students' educational and career aspirations. During the same time, Carl Rogers developed his phenomenological, client-centered approach to counseling, which helped direct the attention of the emerging specialty of counseling psychology from assessment and diagnosis to one of counseling and psychotherapy, which Rogers viewed as facilitating the unfolding of natural, positive human tendencies toward enhanced development and self-actualization. Rogers's view of the development of persons and of the role of counseling and psychotherapy was strikingly different from those characterizing clinical psychology at the time, attending to the facilitation of human develo...

Occupational problems have negative consequences across life domains, yet relatively little research addresses the psychological resources necessary for the adult career transition. Considering Super's concept of career adaptability (D. E. Super &: E. G. Knasel, 1981), the authors outline what they believe adults need to successfully manage the transition. Individuals in transition were interviewed and their responses were analyzed using qualitative methods. Participants who anticipated career change planfully and realistically, even when their jobs appeared to be secure, cited better experiences of the transition and perceived themselves to be coping better than did participants who ignored signs of change or reacted unrealistically soon after the job loss.

This article reviews 50 years of empirical literature on career decision making, summarizing 10 things the field knows "for sure." An anti-introspectivist view of career decision making is then presented, developed by applying findings from cognitive and experimental social psychology to career decision making. This view holds that most processing performed by the human mind for decision making and behavior initiation is not performed at a conscious level and that reflection on those processes may be futile, and detrimental to good decisions. Although the anti-introspectivist perspective challenges many strongly held assumptions, it provides a plausible explanation of some of the difficulties encountered by decision makers and those who counsel them.Theories of career development and career counseling converge on a few critical issues, one of which is the actual processes used to arrive at career decisions. This article addresses the career decisionmaking literature in three sections: first by briefly reviewing the past 50 years of empirical literature on career decision making, summarized as 10 things the field knows "for sure"; second, by presenting what might be termed an anti-introspectioist (AI) view of career decision making, developed largely by applying findings from cognitive and experimental social psychology to career decision making; and finally, by describing several points of tension between the AI perspective and current theories of career decision making. Although the AI perspective challenges many strongly held assumptions, it provides a plausible explanation of some of the difficulties encountered by decision makers and those whose task is to counsel them through the decision-making process. It is presented as a testable position that could shape career development research efforts over the next 50 years.

Career counseling requires clients to make assessments and predictions of their interests, necessitating the use of both rational and intuitive processes. Dual-processing models of human decisionmaking have not been experimentally explored within the context of vocational assessment. One-hundred thirty-six participants chose among eight occupational/educational videos after an unconscious-intuitive, conscious-rational, or decisionas-usual information processing manipulation. Participant interest was assessed before, during, and 2 weeks following the video in order to determine differences across conditions. The results yielded three conclusions. First, the unconscious-intuitive manipulation resulted in interest forecasts that were more predictive of actual interest than did the conscious-rational manipulation or the decision-as-usual conditions. Second, interest levels were recalled more accurately by participants who made choices under unconsciousintuitive conditions than by those in the other two conditions. Finally, a history of occupational engagement was found to be related to decisional quality but only for the control group. These results are discussed in the context of vocational theory.