Career indecision is a classic topic in vocational psychology and presently it is regarded as a multidimensional construct. Career undecided individuals have been classified into two main categories. The first corresponds to a normal phase, in development terms, of career exploration of alternatives that precedes investment in a specific career option. The second, normally called indecisiveness, is of more structural nature. For indecisive individuals, and not simply undecided, the decision making process, including career choice, tends to be a difficult task. The identification of the determinants of indecisiveness has important implications for career counseling. Based on the self-psychology of Heinz Kohut, the primary purpose of this study was to analyze the role of goal instability and self-esteem, two markers of the self's maturity according to this psychological framework of psychoanalytical orientation, in the prediction of indecisiveness. A regression analysis was applied to a Portuguese high-school sample of 314 secondary school students. Overall, the regression equation accounted for 35% of indecisiveness scores. Implications for career theory and counseling are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.