Career Coaching, Psychotherapy or Psychoanalysis: Dealing with a Career Conundrum? by Washington DC Psychologist, Dr. Lynn Friedman

Assess what's right for you: Career coaching (work-life consultation), psychotherapy or psychoanalysis

Psychotherapy or career change coaching can be a valuable adjuvant to any career search. But, how do you know whether you need career change coaching (work-life consultation) or psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, some sort of hybrid, or a mix? Washington, DC, (Chevy Chase, MD), psychologist, psychoanalyst & work-life consultant (career coach),  Dr. Lynn Friedman discusses this dilemma and talks about what sorts of career challenges yield to each of these interventions.

A psychoanalytic approach to career assessment

Author's note: Three articles on identifying and pursuing your work-life goals, prompted a large response. In your emails, phone calls and letters, you asked about the array of work-life interventions. Specifically, readers wanted to know the difference between: career coaching, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Also, they wanted to know, how they might assess whether any of these sorts of work-life interventions might be helpful to them and if so, which ones.

How does one assess whether help is warranted in your career search, and, if so, what type?

How does a person assess whether they need help clarifying and resolving work-life issues? And, after deciding that help might be useful, how does one know what sort of intervention to seek? An important starting point is to identify the work-life conflict. In general, people struggle with three work-life conflicts.

• What do I want to do with my life?
• How do I go about how to pursuing my goals?
• How do I galvanize myself to get started?

For some people, answering these questions is straightforward. They know themselves well. They know their likes and dislikes and their strengths and limitations. They know what they want and their self-esteem is solid enough that they are able to tenaciously pursue their work-life goals.

Others have less clarity or less confidence. Nevertheless, they may be able to make use of the plethora of books on this topic or the support of family and friends to clarify the answers to these questions. Yet, not everyone can answer these questions for themselves. In fact, some people never find an enjoyable and rewarding career. And, some never achieve their financial goals. This is unfortunate in that, for the most part, with the right kind of help career conflicts can be resolved.

How does one assess whether help is warranted and, if so, what type?

How then, should those people who find themselves thwarted go about assessing whether and what sort of help is warranted? My own bias is to encourage anyone in that situation to seek a psychoanalytically-informed, career assessment.

This is the first of a 6 part series. Read the remainder of the series below.

• Part One: Assess whether you need career coaching, psychotherapy or psychoanalysis (This article)
• Part Two: What is psychoanalytically-informed, career assessment?
• Part Three: Who is qualified to conduct psychoanalytically-informed, career assessments
• Part Four: What is Career Coaching? And, when is it the appropriate way to address a career concern?
• Part Five: What is psychodynamic (or, psychoanalytic) therapy? And, when is it the appropriate way to address a career concern?
• Part Six: What is psychoanalysis? And, when is it the optimal way to address a career conflict?