Background. The Innovative Moments Model offers conceptual and methodological tools to analyze clients’ change during career counseling. From this perspective clients’ change occurs by the emergence of new ways of thinking, feeling and/or acting outside a dominant and problematic self-narrative These moments of narrative novelty are called innovative moments (IMs). Reconceptualization is the most complex type of IMs once it implies that clients distance from self-experience to describe the changes achieved and the factors underpinning such changes. Despite theory and research in psychotherapy suggesting the importance of reconceptualization IMs for change, research in career counseling has not yet clarified the role of this type of narrative novelty for clients’ change, which justifies our study.
Aim. To analyze the role of reconceptualization IMs in facilitating and sustaining clients change in Career Construction Counseling
Method. Measures of vocational certainty, vocational identity, career indecision and psychological distress were applied to 42 participants, one week before CCC intervention. All participants received from three to five weekly 50 minutes sessions of CCC. Post-test was carried out after the last CCC session. After CCC intervention, 21 participants in experimental group benefited from 2 reconceptualization sessions and 21 participants benefited from neutral sessions (control group).
Results. Using hierarchical linear model to analyze data we obtained results showing that CCC increased significantly participants’ levels of vocational certainty, vocational identity and decrease significantly both vocational indecision and distress. However, after the intervention reconceptualization sessions increased significantly vocational identity and reduced significantly distress of experimental group participants over those of the control group. Implications for practice are discussed, namely, the importance of the identification and specification of clients change processes to enhance career counseling practice, in general, and with disadvantaged populations, in particular.
