Two-chair dialogue: an emotion-focused technique applied to career counselling

ABSTRACT

This article aims to show the applicability of two-chair dialogue techniques to solve intrapersonal conflicts underpinning career decision-making difficulties. Grounded in a dialectical constructivist perspective this technique evokes the dialogue between two conflicting self-position, each one in a different chair. It is sought that this dialogue fosters harmony between both sides of the conflict to facilitate career decision-making. An illustrative case is presented to describe the sequence of counsellor’s tasks during the process of facilitating conflict resolution. Next, critical aspects of the intervention are commented, namely the role of emotions and working alliance to foster client change. Finally, we refer to the advantages of this technique for flexible and dynamic practices, committed to abolishing frontiers between career and personal counselling.

KEYWORDS:

• Career counselling
• career decision-making difficulties
• dialogic self
• two-chair dialogue

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors are pleased to acknowledge financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [grant number UID/ECO/04007/2019].

Notes on contributors

Paulo Miguel Cardoso

Paulo Cardoso is an assistant professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Évora, Portugal, and researcher at the Research Unit in Psychological Sciences, at the Faculty of Psychology, Lisbon, Portugal. His research activities focus on the fields of career counseling process and outcome as well as career development of disadvantage peoples.

Maria Eduarda Duarte

Maria Eduarda Duarte is a full professor at the University of Lisbon, Faculty of Psychology, Portugal. Her professional interests include career psychology theory and research with special emphasis on counseling processes.