Life Design Dialogues for Self’s Construction

Abstract

Life and career design dialogue (LCDD) is a method of counselling interview that aims at helping people build future perspectives that give their lives meaning. These dialogues are based on an approach to the factors and processes of construction of the self that combines some contributions of sociology (with concepts such as identity offer, social category, social fields, habitus, etc.), of cognitive psychology (with concepts such as cognitive frame, script for action, self-schema, etc.), of dynamic psychology and conversational pragmatics (with concepts such as dual reflexivity, trine reflexivity, dialogue, narrative, life-story, etc.). This synthesis about the construction of the self describes subjective identity as a dynamic system of subjective identity forms (meaning that subjective identity is all at once plural, embedded in social settings of interactions and interlocutions, unified by a narrative about self, and is evolving in connection with the ways people re-narrate their life stories to incorporate all events impinging on it). The example of Mark’s case shows how the activation of trine reflexivity during a LCDD allowed him to construct two expected subjective identity forms forming a future perspective giving meaning to his existence and helping him cope with a career transition.