Career Development Theories and Growth

This assignment delves into various theories that guide career development, highlighting their impact on individual growth and efficiency. It examines how these theories, such as the special focus theory, can be applied to identify career growth levels and improve skill development for achieving desired career goals.

Career Autibiography,
Personal Reflection &
Analysis

CAREER AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Through studying the Masters in Psychology my aim is to become Psychology counsellor in future and
therefore, it would help me in understanding the psychology behaviour and mindset of different individuals. Hence,
it helps me to carry out effective understanding so that I could help individual to overcome their issues. In order to
be consistent with the narrative theory, individual need to focus upon adopting effective career interventions that
should result in changes to individuals occupational narratives over the time. Career Autobiography is an
exploratory study that helps in identifying and measuring change in individuals so that career growth and interest
could be identified (Cervone and Pervin, 2015). I have decided to become psychology counsellor in future after
completing by Master in counselling. Thus, it would help me in building my skills and capabilities so that I can
provide quality counselling to individuals that would be beneficial for them to choose appropriate path. Also,
becoming psychology counsellor helps me to understand individual's mind and their choice of selecting right path.
Thus, in regard to I need to select appropriate theories from Trait and Type Theories, Life Span Theory and Special
Focus Theories. Through applying such theories it helps in enhancing individual's skills and capabilities and thus I
could help them in raising their efficiency.
PERSONAL REFLECTION
It has been assessed that I am pursuing Masters in Psychology and thus in future I would like to become
psychology counsellor. Thus, in order to reach to such a position I need to work very hard and thus understand the
psychology of individual so that I can provide them appropriate counselling and thus help me in understanding their
behaviour and attributes so that career growth could be attained. I also need to improve upon my leadership skills so
that it could help me in directing individuals to reach towards set goals.
ANALYSIS
Following are the different categories from which one theory needs to be selected which are as follows-
Trait and Type theory
With the help of trait and type theory it helps me to enhance my own career growth and thus raise my skills
so that I can obtain knowledge in relation to psychology counsellor. Thus, through adopting such profession, I can
help individuals in providing them right direction as per their working capabilities and skills that results beneficial
for them (Sharf, 2016).
Ernest Kretschmer's classification theory
Through applying Ernest Kretschmer's classification theory helps me to correlate physique and character.
With the help of this study it results in classifying personalities into 4 different types such as-
 Pyknic type- Such type of people are short and having round body. However, such people are prone to
suffer from mental disorder disease i.e. Manic Depressive Psychosis.
 Asthenic type- However, such people are those who have slim body and they are called introverts. These
individuals suffer from serious mental disorder called Schizophrenia (Northouse, 2015).
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 Athletic type- They are individuals with strong muscular body. They are energetic and aggressive and
thus such people also suffer from Manic Depressive Psychosis.
 Dysplastic type- Further, such people will have unproportionate body and does not belong to any of these
types mentioned above. Further, they also possess imbalanced behaviour and personality (Baltes and
Schaie, 2013).
Thus, trait theory helps me to understand the situation and provide appropriate counselling to individual. It
also assists me to carry out measurable aspects of personality and thus improve individual personality so that they
could carry out their desired task and attain goals. Being a psychology counsellor I think that such theory would help
me in raising my skills and capabilities so that I can help individuals who need guidance.
Life Span theory
I also think that life span theory helps in developing psychology behaviour that is being considered as the
study of individual development so that it helps me in improving my career growth. Through implementing such
theory it helps me to understand human aging. Thus, through studying such theory it helps in bringing changes in
human behaviour and thus helps me to identify the behaviour with the help of this theory it helps me to understand
the aging factor of individual and thus identify the current issues surrounding lifespan psychology and its location in
order to develop psychology. In regard to study the aging, it helps me to understand the intuitions about aging and
elderly. For instance, study the aging could be seen either as largely the inevitable accumulation of deficits and
losses and also depends upon certain extent within individuals actions (Datan and Ginsberg, 2013). Being a
psychology counsellor it is essential for me to identify the efforts that are made in relation to individual and cultural
variations so that personality development could be offered. Implementing such theory is stated as one of the
effective way and thus understanding different types of personalities so that lifespan research could be done.
Therefore, psychology counsellor requires understanding the lifespan development so that it could help me in
improving the career and attaining growth objectives.
Super's Life Span-life space theory
Here, adopting Super's Life Span theory helps in identifying the differential-developmental-social-
phenomenological career theory. However, it is based upon 14 different assumptions of Super's theory-
 It has been identified that people differ within their abilities, personalities and interests,
 However, individuals are qualified by virtue of all these features.
 It is essential that each and every occupation requires a characteristic pattern of abilities.
 Vocational preference and competencies need to be assessed in order to understand the situations.
 Identifying the nature of career pattern (Goulet and Baltes, 2013).
 Coping success within any life career stage.
 Attaining career maturity through carrying out different characteristics.
 Achieving life stages development so that facilitating the maturing of abilities and interests.
 Carrying out the process of career development in order to implement occupational self concepts.
 Attaining high level of work satisfaction that depends upon the extent to which individual finds adequate
outlets (Wrzus and et. al., 2013).
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 Work and occupation helps in providing effective focus for personality development.
Further, it could be assessed that at the time when workers are busy earning a living at the same time they
are also busy in living a life. Thus, such simultaneous combination of life roles helps in developing effective
structure so that appropriate career pattern could be build (Grusec and Hastings, 2014).
Special focus theory
With the help of such theory it would result in identifying the special focus required upon individual that
would help them to lead to ambiguity within different constituents and thus carry out projection so that appropriate
analysis could be done. Through carrying out special focus upon individual who need proper direction results in
encouraging them to perform desired operations in an effective and efficient manner. Applying special focus is
essential because it is based upon improving and carrying out special focus upon individual in order to attain high
career growth (Stewart and Shamdasani, 2014).
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the study that through applying different theories it helps in identifying the
growth level within career and thus helps in improving the efficiency so that set targets could be attained. However,
all such models results in raising the effectiveness of individual in order to reach them towards desired career and
give proper counselling so that skills and abilities could be improved.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Baltes, P.B. and Schaie, K.W. eds., 2013. Life-span developmental psychology: Personality and socialization.
Elsevier.
Cervone, D. and Pervin, L.A., 2015. Personality, Binder Ready Version: Theory and Research. John Wiley & Sons.
Datan, N. and Ginsberg, L.H. eds., 2013. Life-span developmental psychology: Normative life crises. Elsevier.
Goulet, L.R. and Baltes, P.B. eds., 2013. Life-span developmental psychology: Research and theory. Academic
Press.
Grusec, J.E. and Hastings, P.D. eds., 2014. Handbook of socialization: Theory and research. Guilford Publications.
Northouse, P.G., 2015. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Sharf, R.S., 2016. Applying career development theory to counseling. Cengage Learning.
Stewart, D.W. and Shamdasani, P.N., 2014. Focus groups: Theory and practice (Vol. 20). Sage publications.
Wrzus, C. and et. al., 2013. Social network changes and life events across the life span: A meta-
analysis. Psychological bulletin. 139(1). pp.53.
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