Innovative moments and change in Career Construction Counseling

This article presents an exploratory study of the process of change during Career Construction
Counseling (CCC). The Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS) and the Return to the
Problem Coding System (RPCS) were used to an intensive analysis of a career counseling
case — the case of Michael. Both systems are grounded in a narrative conception of the self
which suggests that narrative change results from the elaboration and development of
narrative exceptions to a client's core problematic self-narrative. The IMCS identifies and tracks
the occurrence of five different types of narrative change and the RPCS tracks the ambivalence
present in the clients discourse throughout the therapeutic process. This is the first attempt
to use these methods with a career counseling case. The results suggest that the narrative
elaboration progresses from the first to the third session. We discuss these results, emphasizing
the process of change in career counseling with clients in which maladaptive repetition
underlies career decision-making difficulties.