Interview with Professor David Blustein

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Professor David Blustein is a professor of counselling, developmental and educational psychology at Boston College. He is a fellow of Division 17 of the American Psychological Association, and he has received the Division 17 Early Career Scientist-Practitioner Award and the John Holland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Personality and Career Research. His current interests include the psychology of work, work based transitions, the exploration process, the interface between work and interpersonal functioning, and the impact of social class in human development.

Can you tell me a little about your own career development?

I actually have had a very traditional and somewhat privileged trajectory in my own career development; in fact, this privilege is increasingly present in my life as I mull over the lives of those with less privilege. I grew up in the New York City area (in Queens--a large borough outside of Manhattan) and lived in a small apartment with my parents and my brother. Both of my parents worked in jobs that they described as not very glamorous; my father was a sheet metal mechanic for Pan American Airlines and my mother worked as a clerk in a department store. I went to the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where I studied psychology and also became active in rock music criticism as well as various political movements of the era (primarily oriented toward ending the war in Vietnam and civil rights). I then went to Queens College and received a Master's degree in Counselling and Guidance there in 1976. At that point, I worked for about 5 years as a counsellor in several colleges in the New York City …