Chaos Theory

The Chaos Theory of career development views individuals as being complex dynamic systems. As individuals grow and develop they are subject to many different and continually life to change life challenges.

• Has emerged from the disciplines of economics, mathematics, biology, and physics. 
• Offers a different way of understanding the complexity and uncertainty of human development in general and career development specifically.

The concept of Attraction:

Pryor and Bright (2011) defined attraction as a process used by individuals to organize a coherent self and then maintain and sustain it when change occurs.

• Point Attractor: Pattern of behavior often is focused on choosing the best occupation based on a match between their personalities, abilities, and interests.
• An extreme may be seen as having tunnel vision, exclusive preoccupation, overconfidence in decision making, etc.

• Pendulum Attractor: Describes swings in behavior, this pattern of behavior engages in dichotomous either-or thinking and may hold a rigid belief. 
• Sometimes clients in this thinking will rarely be able to genertae win-win scebarios.

• Torus Attractor: Describes as routine, habitual, and predicatable thinking and behavior. 
• Individuals who use this pattern try to control theor lives by organizing and classifying people and things.

• Strange Attractor: (Open systems thinking) Recognizes the possibility of change being non-linear in the sense that a small difference may result in every major reconfiguration of the systen.
• Promotes the ability for individuals to adopt and grow.

• Chaos and Spirituality: Importance of integrating spirituality into conceptualizations of career development. There are 5 dimensions.
• Connection: How we interconnect with the human community, the world, and the universe.
• Purpose: Focuses on humans' sense of meaning, purpose, and significance.
• Transcendence: The idea that there is a greater power beyond our understanding.
• Harmony: Attention to how everything fits together into a whole.
• Calling: Idea that individuals often perceive that what they are doing with their lives is a result of being called.
• Chaos theorists have observed that change can occur in systems either gradually or very quickly. The effect of change is to reconfigure the system.
• When change occurs, it is called a phase shift because the system will have changed from its original configuration.
• Shiftwork describes the work of career counselors helping clients deal with these phase shifts or changes in life. There are ll phase shifts page 46.

Helpful Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVGA1cQX4D4&t=91s