Coincidence, happenstance, serendipity, fate, or the hand of god: Case studies in synchronicity - Article

Career counselors may need to broaden their view about their function in facilitating their clients' career decisions. If career counselors conceptualize finding meaningful life's work as a vehicle for personal agency and transcendence, they will approach the counseling process holistically. Unfortunately, one of the foibles of the career counseling field is its tendency to rely overmuch on mechanistic, trait-factor assessments and formula career counseling techniques. This does not imply that the use of assessments and well-established techniques are unimportant. On the contrary, their use in a holistic framework allows the client to discover and accept an authentic self-identity. It does imply, however, that the job does not end there. Traditional career counseling approaches alone may not be sufficient in assisting an individual to find meaningful life's work (see Bloch, 1997). Goal setting and decision making are not a midpoint or an end point in the process but the beginning of what may well be the most significant function of the career counselor--that of supportive coach.

A number of specific interventions seem to be relevant for working with blocked individuals such as those described here. Self-exploration beyond interests and abilities is required for these individuals to drop a false persona and develop congruent, authentic identities. Values-based interventions seem to be especially warranted. Of course, support and guidance in a nonjudgmental, open-ended environment can provide the atmosphere in which to consider more authentic, suitable career options.

There is a role for career counselors in a counseling model that recognizes chance influences in career decision making (Cabral & Salamone, 1990). Rather than seeing chance events as random and meaningless, synchronicity provides a framework for understanding and working with such phenomena when they occur. Krumboltz (1998) and Mitchell et al. (1999) called for teaching clients that unplanned events (i.e., synchronistic occurrences) are normal and expected components in the career development process and discussed ways in which clients can generate such unplanned events. Integrating and using synchronicity in career counseling then concerns itself with expecting the unexpected. Synchronicity can be seen as goal-directed, although not under the conscious control of the client. Counselors themselves need to make a leap of faith: Remarkable coincidences are not necessarily accidental. Psyche and matter are in meaningful contact, the kind of contact that can produce significant revelations or personal transcenden ce.

The career counselor can enhance his or her ability to think synchronistically, thus supporting this kind of thinking with clients. Four elements lead to synchronistic thinking: (a) understanding the existence and universality of synchronistic phenomena as realities grounded in religion, non-Western worldviews, and scientific inquiry; (b) a willingness to investigate one's own sense of spirituality in its broadest context; (c) a willingness to be unconventional in the face of what is often a conventional, deterministic discipline within the counseling profession; and (d) the ability to use nontraditional techniques as part of the career development process.