03/01/2015

In Defense of The Freedom to Work: A Book Review of The Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Working

Book Review by Peter McIlveen

Blustein, D. L. (2013). The Oxford handbook of the psychology of working. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 346 pages.

As I stood on the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts in 2013, I vividly imagined the sound of rhythmic marching steps of redcoat marines entering the village en route to Concord, and I heard the legendary words of Captain Parker, “Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here".  Upon that image and stirring words I felt anew the idea of freedom.   There is  a freedom that extends across time, among all peoples across the world, in good economic times and in bad; it is the freedom to work.

Can such a lofty ideal as freedom be captured in the pages of an academic book, composed of dry prose written under the hands of a privileged few?  Yes, it can; and, in recent years, there has been no better advocate for the freedom to work than Professor David Blustein of Boston College.  What makes Blustein’s scholarship unique is articulated in his book, The Psychology of Working (Blustein, 2006).  Observers of Blustein’s advocacy for a new perspective on work and career—a word he eschews—know that it is generating momentum.  The most recent instalment is a compilation of very fine essays by an array of outstanding scholars in the field: The Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Working (Blustein, 2013).  This edited collection not only promulgates the argument  of the need for a new vision, but also provides glimpses of what ‘should be’ in the field of career development.

The book begins with Blustein’s personal vision for the psychology of working as a critique, and as a perspective defined by a set of core assumptions.  What follows is a balance of themes from radical critical psychology, social constructionism, and traditional theories, all focused toward providing ideas that substantiate the psychology of working as critique and perspective.  Read separately, these chapters are truly informative; read collectively, they are transformative; they complement one another and converge into a conceptual lens through which the kaleidoscope of psychology of working may be envisioned.

The substantial chapters that address matters of race, gender, LGBT, poverty, class, family, caring, aging, and disability, deepen the literature of the psychology of working.  All these topics are central to the humanitarian vision of the psychology of working, and the chapters’ authors deserve commendation for their profound review of the respective topics.  Any practitioner-scholar who reads these chapters with an open mind shall be well informed and, moreover, will be given reason to reflect on their ways of knowing and working.  The book is not a grab bag of techniques; instead, it is a book that will cause a practitioner to reflect, so as to create new ideas for practices that are relevant to their contexts and, therefore, authentically engaging for their clients and students.

True to the disciplinary pluralism of the psychology of working, the book’s chapters include perspectives from other disciplines, notably psychotherapy, industrial and organizational psychology, and education.  What is notable in relation to the psychology of working is that these disciplines extend across the multiple domains of a person: intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, school, community, and society.  Thus, consistent with the psychology of working, these chapters answer the call for multidisciplinarity (i.e., many perspectives) and interdisciplinarity (i.e., convergence of perspectives). 

Despite its depth and breadth, the book should have better explicated the psychology of working on two fronts.  First, the book does not include substantive contributions by scholars whose professions are not psychological in nature, yet germane to the success of the psychology of working (e.g., economics, political science).  Second, the book does not include substantive international perspectives. These are two issues that must be addressed if the psychology of working is to achieve its full potential as a critique and perspective. 

Notwithstanding its limitations, which I am sure Blustein and his contemporaries will address in the future, this book is an outstanding companion for practitioner-scholars, researchers, and graduate students of career development.  It may very well serve as a textbook for a graduate course, and doctoral students would do well to accommodate their research aspirations within the paradigmatic parameters of the psychology of working.  The psychology of working is an invitation to other disciplines to critically reconsider their views of work and its role in people’s lives, and this book serves as the perfect primer for dialogue among the disciplines. Thus, scholars who teach other psychological disciplines that affect health (e.g., clinical psychology) should read this book and reflect on their own ways of knowing and working. 

Threaded through this collection of outstanding papers is a salient message: There is more work to be done to prosecute the case of the psychology of working as a critique and a perspective.  That is, adherents must ensure that professional practices of career development and the research that informs those practices are conceptualised through a moral lens for social justice and economic fairness. Advocating a vision of social and economic fairness must continue apace to subvert the power of subtle discourse that lulls practitioners, scholars, policy-makers, and political leaders into believing and espousing ideas that are antithetical to the freedom to work and, thus, perniciously distort the American Dream.

References

Blustein, D. L. (2006). The psychology of working: A new perspective for career development, counseling, and public policy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Blustein, D. L. (2013). The Oxford handbook of the psychology of working. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Dr Peter McIlveen is an associate professor with the University of Southern Queensland, Australia.  He is a counselling psychologist and his teaching and research is specialized in career development and vocational psychology.  Dr McIlveen is a member of NCDA, vice-president of the Career Development Association of Australia (CDAA), and a member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS).

Email: peter.mcilveen@usq.edu.au

Twitter: @petermcilveen