The Mid Life Transition and Career Counseling in Britain

In Britain, career guidance has traditionally been most freely avail-able to adolescents and young adults through careers work provided in the education system. Although older adults, particularly women returning to paid employment have often needed careers guidance, little attention has been given to their needs. However, the dramatic increase in the number of mature students within higher education and many people made redundant in their thirties and forties have highlighted the need for guidance. Psychodynamic Theory and Mid Life Transition In order to understand more fully the careers counselling needs of this ’mid life ’ group, it is important to consider theories of human development that seek to explain the transitional process experienced by people of this age. Indeed, increasing attention has been directed at the concept of mid life ’crisis. ’ From a theoretical standpoint, this ’crisis ’ can be explained from a biological, sociological or psychological perspective. For the purposes of this study, a psychological or more specifically, a psychodynamic perspective has been selected. The work of Erik Erikson (1959) includes the best known psychodynamic theory of the life cycle. His seventh and penultimate life stage, which in-cludes the mid life period, focuses on the theme of ‘generativity ’ or the geoncern in establishing and guiding the next generation’. His theory is based on a series of polarities. The other pole for this stage is stagnation, which involves a self