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100% found this document useful (5 votes)
93 views53 pages

(eBook PDF) Applying Career Development Theory to Counseling 6th Editioninstant download

The document is a promotional listing for various eBooks related to career development and counseling, including titles such as 'Applying Career Development Theory to Counseling' and 'Career Counseling and Development in a Global Economy.' It provides links for instant downloads and encourages readers to explore more resources on the website. Additionally, it contains a table of contents outlining chapters that cover various theories and practices in career counseling.

Uploaded by

vukotaphurah
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
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Contents v

What the Counselor Needs to Know 46


Example of Step 2 47
Step 3: Integrating Information about Oneself and the World of Work 48
How the Counselor Can Help 49
Example of Step 3 50
Applying the Theory to Women 51
Applying the Theory to Culturally Diverse Populations 53
Counselor Issues 54
Summary 55
References 56

CHAPTER 3
Occupations: Information and Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
The United States Labor Market 60
Sociological and Economic Approaches 65
Youth Employment 66
The Effect of the Work Environment on the Individual 69
Status Attainment Theory 69
Human Capital Theory 73
The Structure of the Labor Market 75
Women and Discrimination in the Workplace 77
Culturally Diverse Individuals and Discrimination in the Workplace 82
Summary 86
References 86

CHAPTER 4
Work Adjustment Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Step 1: Assessing Abilities, Values, Personality, and Interests 96
Abilities 96
Values 97
Personality Styles 99
Interests 100
A Counseling Example 100
Step 2: Measuring the Requirements and Conditions of Occupations 102
Ability Patterns 102
Value Patterns 103
Combining Ability and Value Patterns 104
Step 3: Matching Abilities, Values, and Reinforcers 104
Job Adjustment Counseling 108
Adjustment to Retirement 110
Application to Gifted Adolescents 111
The Role of Assessment Instruments 112
The Role of Occupational Information 113
Applying the Theory to Women and Culturally Diverse Populations 114
Counselor Issues 115
Summary 115
References 116

Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
vi Contents

CHAPTER 5
Holland’s Theory of Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
The Six Types 119
Realistic 120
Investigative 121
Artistic 122
Social 122
Enterprising 123
Conventional 124
Combinations of Types 124
Explanatory Constructs 125
Congruence 126
Differentiation 127
Consistency 129
Identity 130
Research on Holland’s Constructs 131
The Role of Occupational Information 132
The Role of Assessment Instruments 133
Applying the Theory to Women 134
Applying the Theory to Culturally Diverse Populations 135
Counselor Issues 136
Summary 137
References 138

CHAPTER 6
Myers–Briggs Type Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Perceiving and Judging 145
The Two Ways of Perceiving 145
The Two Ways of Judging 146
Combinations of Perceiving and Judging 146
Two Counseling Examples 147
The Preference for Perception or Judgment 148
Extraversion and Introversion 149
The Sixteen Type Combinations 149
Dominant and Auxiliary Processes 152
Using the Myers–Briggs Typology in Counseling 152
Example of Career Decision-Making Counseling 153
Example of Career Adjustment Counseling 159
The Role of Occupational Information 161
The Role of Assessment Instruments 162
Applying the Theory to Women and Culturally Diverse Populations 164
Counselor Issues 165
Summary 166
References 166

Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Contents vii

PART II Life-Span Theory


CHAPTER 7
Career Development in Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Super’s Model of the Career Development of Children 172
Curiosity 173
Exploration 174
Information 175
Key Figures 176
Internal versus External Control 176
Development of Interests 177
Time Perspective 177
Self-Concept and Planfulness 178
Modifications of Super’s Early Growth Stage of Career Development 180
Modifications of Super’s Fantasy Substage 180
Modification of Super’s Interest Substage 181
Using Super’s Model in Counseling Children 181
Gottfredson’s Theory of Self-Creation, Circumscription, and Compromise 183
Cognitive Growth 184
Self-Creation 185
Circumscription 187
Compromise 189
Implications of Gottfredson’s Theory for Super’s Theory 193
Use of Gottfredson’s and Super’s Concepts in Counseling 193
Career Development of Children from Culturally Diverse Backgrounds 195
The Role of Occupational Information 196
Occupational Information in Counseling 197
School-to-Work Programs Designed for Children 197
The Role of Assessment Instruments 198
Counselor Issues 199
Summary 199
References 199

CHAPTER 8
Adolescent Career Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Factors Influencing Adolescent Career Development 203
Super’s Late Growth Stage of Adolescent Career Development 204
Development of Capacities 204
Development of Values 205
Transition to the Crystallizing Substage 206
Modifications of Super’s Late Growth Stage of Adolescent Career Development 206
Level 4: Internal Processes and Capacities 206
Level 5: Interaction 207
Level 6: Systemic Interaction 207
A Counseling Example 208
Career Maturity 209
Super’s Conception of Career Maturity 210
Identity and Context 215
A Counseling Example 218

Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
viii Contents

The Role of Occupational Information 220


The Role of Assessment Instruments 220
Gender Issues in Adolescence 221
A Counseling Example 222
Career Development of Adolescents from Diverse Cultural Backgrounds 224
Case Example 225
Counselor Issues 227
Summary 227
References 227

CHAPTER 9
Late Adolescent and Adult Career Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Role Salience 232
Life Roles 234
Indicators of the Salience of Life Roles 235
Adult Life Stages 238
Exploration 239
Emerging Adulthood (Arnett) 243
Establishment 244
Maintenance 247
Disengagement 249
Recycling 250
Life Stages of Women 252
Life Stages of Culturally Diverse Adults 255
Counselor Issues 258
Summary 259
References 259

CHAPTER 10
Adult Career Crises and Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Types of Transitions 264
Categories and Approaches to Career Transitions 265
The Kaleidoscope Career 266
Boundaryless Careers 267
The Protean Career 268
The Career Transitions Inventory 268
Nonnormative Career Events 268
Persistent Occupational Problems 269
Models of Transitions and Crises 269
Hopson and Adams’s Model of Adult Transitions 271
Immobilization 271
Minimization 272
Self-Doubt 273
Letting Go 274
Testing Out 274
Search for Meaning 274
Internalization 275
Career Crises Affecting Women 276
Temporary Reentry into and Leave-Taking from the Labor Force 276
Sexual Harassment 278

Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Contents ix

Career Crises Affecting Culturally Diverse Populations 283


Counselor Issues 285
Summary 285
References 286

PART III Special Focus Theories

CHAPTER 11
Constructivist and Narrative Approaches to Career Development . . . . . . . . 295
Narrative Counseling 296
Storytelling 298
Goals of Assessment in Narrative Counseling 298
Cochran’s Narrative Career Counseling 299
Elaborating a Career Problem 300
Composing a Life History 302
Eliciting a Future Narrative 304
Reality Construction 305
Changing a Life Structure 305
Enacting a Role 306
Crystallizing a Decision 306
Savickas’s Career Construction Theory 307
Vocational Personality—Holland’s Theory 307
Developmental Tasks of Career Adaptability 309
Dimensions of Career Adaptability 310
Life Themes 311
Career Counseling Using the Career Construction Interview 313
Career Style Interview with Tiffany 313
Career Counseling Using Career Construction Theory 316
The Role of Assessment Instruments 321
The Role of Occupational Information 321
Applying the Theories to Women and Culturally Diverse Populations 322
Counselor Issues 323
Summary 324
References 324

CHAPTER 12
Relational Approaches to Career Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Roe’s Personality Development Theory 328
Attachment Theory 329
Parent–Child Career Interactions 331
Family Systems Therapy 333
Phillips’s Developmental–Relational Model 334
Actions of Others 335
Self-Directedness 337
Counseling Example of the Developmental–Relational Model 338
Blustein’s Relational Theory of Working 340
Blustein’s Propositions for the Relational Theory of Working 341
Applying the Theories to Women and Culturally Diverse Populations 347
Summary 348
References 349
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
x Contents

CHAPTER 13
Krumboltz’s Social Learning Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Genetic Influences 355
Environmental Conditions and Events 355
Social Conditions 355
Parents and Caretakers 355
Peer Groups 356
Structured Educational Settings 356
Occupational Conditions 356
Learning Experiences 356
Instrumental Learning Experiences (H) 356
Associative Learning Experiences (O) 357
Task-Approach Skills 357
Client Cognitive and Behavioral Skills 357
Self-Observation Generalizations about Abilities 358
Self-Observation Generalizations about Interests 358
Self-Observation Generalizations about Values 358
Generalizations about the World 358
Task-Approach Skills Used in Career Decision Making 359
Counselor Behavioral Strategies 359
Reinforcement 359
Role Models 360
Role-Playing 360
Simulation 361
Cognitive Strategies for Counseling 361
Goal Clarification 362
Counter a Troublesome Belief 362
Look for Inconsistencies between Words and Actions 362
Cognitive Rehearsal 363
Happenstance Learning Theory: Fundemental Goals for Career Counseling 364
Applying Happenstance Learning Theory to Career Counseling 366
Step 1: Normalize Happenstance Learning Theory in the Client’s History 367
Step 2: Assist Clients to Transform Curiosity into Opportunities for Learning and
Exploration 368
Step 3: Teach Clients to Produce Desirable Chance Events 369
Step 4: Teach Clients to Overcome Blocks to Action 370
The Role of Occupational Information 371
The Role of Assessment Instruments 372
Applying Social Learning Theory to Women 372
Applying Social Learning Theory to Culturally Diverse Populations 373
Counselor Issues 373
Summary 374
References 374

CHAPTER 14
Social Cognitive Career Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Self-Efficacy 377
Outcome Expectations 379
Goals 379
Contextual Factors: Barriers and Supports 380
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Contents xi

Social Cognitive Model of Career Choice 381


Counseling Example 383
Social Cognitive Model of the Development of Interests 385
Social Cognitive Model of Performance 386
Social Cognitive Model of Work and Life Satisfaction 388
The Role of Occupational Information 389
The Role of Assessment Instruments 389
Applying Social Cognitive Career Theory to Women 390
Applying Social Cognitive Theory to Culturally Diverse Populations 392
Counselor Issues 393
Summary 394
References 394

CHAPTER 15
Career Decision-Making Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
A Spiritual Perspective on Decision Making 400
Spirituality (Bloch and Richmond) 401
Miller-Tiedeman’s Lifecareer Theory 404
A Case Example of Spiritual Counseling 405
Holistic Approach to Life Planning (Hansen) 407
A Cognitive Information–Processing Approach 410
Assumptions of a Cognitive Information–Processing Approach 410
The Pyramid of Information Processing 411
The Executive Processing Domain 419
Materials for Counselors and Students 421
The Role of Occupational Information 423
The Role of Assessment Instruments 423
Applying the Theories to Women and Culturally Diverse Populations 424
Counselor Issues 425
Summary 425
References 425

PART IV Theoretical Integration


CHAPTER 16
Theories in Combination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Outline of Theories and Their Strengths and Weaknesses 432
An Integrative Approach 450
Combining Theories 451
Combining Life-Span Theory with Trait and Factor and Career Decision-Making
Theories 452
Combining Trait and Factor Theories 454
Combining Career Decision-Making Theories 455
The Counselor’s Choice 455
Noncounseling Applications of Theories 455
Screening Methods 455
Paper-and-Pencil Materials 455
Computerized Guidance Systems 457
Internet 458
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
xii Contents

Special Counseling Issues 458


Group Career Counseling 459
Career Counseling as a Related Issue 460
Changing Work Settings 460
Placement Counseling 461
Use of Assessment Instruments in Theories 462
Occupational Classification Systems and Career Development Theories 463
How Theories Apply to Career Development Issues of Women 464
How Theories Apply to Cultural Diversity Issues in Career Development 465
Counselor Issues 466
Trait and Factor Theories 466
Life-Span Theories 466
Career Decision-Making Theories 467
Sociological and Economic Approaches 467
Conclusion 467
References 468

Appendix A CACREP Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471


Appendix B Tests and Their Publishers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Appendix C Web Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487

Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Preface for Students

Now
The purpose of this textbook is to provide background information that you may use in
working with clients who have concerns about problems at work or making a career
choice. Part One of this book describes several views of how people make career choices
and deal with adjusting to working, along with suggestions for counseling them. Part
Two examines how individuals deal with career choice and work issues in childhood,
adolescence, adulthood, and retirement. Job loss and sexual harassment also are dis-
cussed. Part Three explains specific issues such as the role of parents and others on
career choice. Cognitive and behavioral approaches to career development also provide
useful views on career counseling. Part Four integrates different theories or approaches
to career counseling and reviews materials in the previous chapters. To help you orga-
nize the material, I have added a Theory Outline at the beginning of each chapter to
give you a brief outline of the major points of the theory. For the beginning and ending
chapters (Chapters 1 and 16), which are not descriptions of specific theories, I list the
Chapter Highlights. A more in depth outline is provided in Chapter 16.
To make the book practical for your use with clients, I have included case examples
and client–counselor dialogues. Theories of career development are based on research
that often uses tests and inventories. A number of tests and inventories are integrated
with theories in this textbook. I’ve explained how you might use them in career
counseling.

Later
This textbook can help you when you are doing career counseling with clients both when
in graduate school and when working as a counselor or mental health professional. Not
all career counseling is done by counselors who call themselves career counselors. A
number of former students have told me that they have done career counseling with
clients when they did not expect that they would be doing so. I have tried to make this
a book that will be a useful source for you when you are active in the counseling or men-
tal health profession. Consulting the text at a later time can help you in understanding
work-related concerns and career choice issues when counseling individuals with such
problems.
Some of you may be preparing for a licensing or certification examination based on
CACREP guidelines. Appendix A describes CACREP standards for career issues and lists
the page numbers that cover each of the standards.
I have also developed a student manual containing exercises that can be used in indi-
vidual or group career counseling. These exercises provide a practical means of helping
clients with career choice and work issues. The Student Manual also has many practice
multiple-choice questions that can be useful in preparing for classroom or other
examinations.

Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
xiii
Preface for Instructors
Students taking a beginning graduate course in career guidance, career theory, or career
counseling want to know how to assist clients with career concerns. This book will help
them relate career theory and research to the practice of counseling, aiding them in their
practicum, their internship, and their jobs as counselors. In this sixth edition of Applying
Career Development Theory to Counseling
Counseling, I show how each career development theory
can be used in counseling. Each theory gives special insight into various perspectives on
career development as they affect career counseling. Furthermore, the theories organize
facts into a comprehensive system for students to understand and to use, rather than
overwhelm them with unrelated lists of information.
Case examples are a special feature of this book. For each theory and its significant
constructs, one or more cases are used to illustrate the conceptual approach of the the-
ory. The examples are given in a dialogue between the counselor and the client. In the
dialogue, the counselor’s conceptualization follows most counselor statements and
appears within brackets. This approach provides a direct application of the theory to
counseling practice, making the book useful to both students and practicing counselors.
In a few places, narrative descriptions of cases are used to illustrate theories.

The Sixth Edition


To help students organize the material, I have added a Theory Outline at the beginning
of each chapter to give them a brief outline of the major points of the theory. This out-
line provides a summary for them to refer to at any point in their reading. For the first
and last chapters, I instead list Chapter Highlights, which include material that describes
issues and skills related to career counseling (Chapter 1) and a review of theories as well
as a discussion of other matters (Chapter 16). I also provide a more in depth outline of
theories in Chapter 16.
New to the sixth edition are several significant additions as listed here by chapter:
Chapter 3: Occupations: Information and Theory. Occupational information for the
United States labor market has been updated in this edition. More references are made
to the global labor market than in previous editions.
Chapter 7: Career Development in Childhood. Super’s early growth stage of chil-
dren’s career development has been modified by including information about Howard
and Walsh’s fantasy substage, including Level 1, Pure Association, and Level 2, Magical
Thinking, as well as modification of Super’s interest substage, which includes Level 3,
External Activities. This addition to the literature on children’s career development
provides new ideas on this subject.
Chapter 8: Adolescent Career Development. Super’s late growth stage of adolescent
career development has also been modified by Howard and Walsh. Super’s Capacities
substage has been modified to include Howard and Walsh’s Level 4, Internal Processes
and Capacities substage; Super’s substage featuring values has been modified to include
Level 5, Interaction. Howard and Walsh describe Super’s transition to the crystallizing
substage through their explanation of Level 6, Systematic Interaction. These levels pro-
vide a recent view of adolescent career development. I also present new information on
Vondracek and colleagues’ work on the concept of vocational identity.

Copyright
xiv 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Preface for Instructors xv

Chapter 9. Late Adolescent and Adult Career Development. In the field of develop-
mental psychology, Arnett describes a stage of development that covers the overlap of
adolescence and adulthood that he calls emerging adulthood. This time period includes
the age of identity, the age of instability, a self-focused age, the age of feeling in-between,
and the age of possibilities. I focus on how these stages relate to career development by
providing new insights on how young people approach entry into the labor market.
Chapter 10: Adult Career Crises and Transitions. In the section on career transi-
tions, the discussion of the boundaryless careers and protean careers has been expanded
to include the kaleidoscope career. The kaleidoscope career reflects the search for
authenticity, challenge, and balance between work and other activities that more indivi-
duals are searching for.
Chapter 12: Relational Approaches to Career Development. I have added an expla-
nation of Blustein’s relational theory of working, which is related to Richardson’s discus-
sion of the working perspective. The work of Blustein and Richardson emphasizes the
value of relationships as they affect an individual’s working life both during and outside
of work. Blustein and Richardson address the issue that individuals cannot always find
work that satisfies their interests and abilities. Blustein provides a theory that shows
how relationships provide value and meaning in working.
Chapter 13. Krumboltz’s Social Learning Theory. Recently, Krumboltz has changed
the name of Planned Happenstance Theory to Happenstance Learning Theory. I have
made changes in the chapter to reflect the implication of these changes to his goals for
career counseling.
Chapter 15. Career Decision-Making Theories. There has been considerable re-
search on the concept of calling
calling, which helps to show the value of calling in a spiritual
perspective on career development. I present a summary of this information to help pro-
vide a contrast between a spiritual perspective on career development and other
perspectives.
Chapter 16: Theories in Combination. I have added a section on strengths and
weaknesses of each theory. I use a detailed outline of each theory in the book and then
summarize each theory through a discussion of the theory’s strengths and weaknesses.
This section of the chapter can be used for studying the materials in this book, and it
can also be used when doing career counseling to remind students about the various the-
ories and their approaches to career development.
The Appendices have been significantly revised. Appendix A contains the 2009
CACREP standards for Career Development as well as how each standard relates to sec-
tions in this textbook. Appendix B has revised information about tests and their publishers.
Appendix C includes information about Web sites for career counseling organizations,
education and internships, job postings, and occupational information.
Each chapter in this sixth edition has been revised to reflect the results of new
research and changes in the theory, where there have been changes. Although not as
obvious as other changes, research that has been done outside of the United States con-
tinues to make a greater contribution to career development research that is discussed in
this textbook. Of particular interest is a marked increase in research coming from differ-
ent countries in Africa.

Special Considerations in Each Chapter


Each career development theory is discussed in terms of its implication for using occu-
pational information, for using tests and inventories, and for special issues that may
affect the application of the theory. Some theories use an occupational classification sys-
tem; others specify how occupational information can be using counseling. Yet other
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
xvi Preface for Instructors

theories have relatively little to say about the use of occupational information. Because
occupational information (and educational information) is such an important part of
career counseling, special efforts are made to link theory and career information. Many
theories use tests and inventories both as a means of researching career development
theory and as tools for the counselor to use in helping clients assess themselves. This
book focuses on assessment instruments as they relate to theories and does not assume
knowledge of assessment issues, although some information about reliability and validity
is presented. Also, career development theories provide insight into possible conflicts be-
tween counselor values and client values, which may present problems to the counselor.
Considering problems in applying theory, occupational information, and assessment can
help students to select the career development theories that will assist them most in their
work as counselors.
In each chapter, a section addresses the application of theories of career development
to women and culturally diverse populations. Theories vary greatly in how they address
the issues of women. For example, Gottfredson’s career development theory deals specif-
ically with career issues of women. Other theories deal only tangentially with women’s
career choice issues. Some career development theories were originally created for White
men and were later expanded to include women and diverse cultural groups. This sixth
edition reflects an increase in research on the career development issues of culturally
diverse populations. This is a particularly challenging issue to address because there are
a wide variety of cultural groups and differences within cultural groups. For example,
there are many significant cultural differences among Native American tribal groups.
Also, some career development issues may be different for African Americans compared
with Black people in other countries. Included in the emphasis on cultural diversity is a
reference to research done in other countries, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Contents of This Book


This book is divided into an introduction and four parts: “Trait and Type Theories”
(Part One), “Life Span-Theory” (Part Two),”Special Focus Theories” (Part Three), and
“Theoretical Integration” (Part Four). Trait and type theories emphasize the assessment
of interest, abilities, achievements, personality, and values, together with the acquisition
of occupational information. Life-span theory follows a chronological approach, studying
people across broad stages in the life span. Special focus theories include the application
to career development issues of research in psychology, such as constructivist theory and
learning theory. Theoretical integration deals with how these theories can be combined
for effective career counseling. The last chapter (Chapter 16) also discusses the relevance
of career development areas to special issues such as noncounseling interventions, group
counseling, and job placement, among other concerns. Chapter 1 briefly describes each
chapter.

Course Application
This book is intended for a beginning graduate course of which career issues are a major
component. The book can be used in different ways, depending on whether the emphasis
of the course is on career counseling, career assessment, career guidance, or career
theory.
Whereas most books that describe career counseling prescribe the method or many
components of methods, this book presents a number of different theoretical and con-
ceptual approaches to career counseling. After studying these various approaches, the
student can decide which theories will be most helpful to him or her in counseling
work. In general, the chapters are independent of each other, and not all chapters need
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Preface for Instructors xvii

to be assigned. Because trait and factor theory represents a straightforward approach to


career choice and adjustment, it is often an appropriate starting place. Also, because
Chapter 3 expands on occupational information described in Chapter 2, it may be ap-
propriate to use the two chapters in sequence.
The assignment of career tests and inventories, together with their manuals, can be
combined with the use of this book. Table 16-1 on page 456 lists the tests and invento-
ries referred to in this book and the theory with which they are associated. Trait and
factor theories make the most use of the tests and inventories; life-span theory,
decision-making theory, social learning theory, and constructivist approaches make less
direct use of them.

Supplements
A student manual, which was available for the fifth edition, has been revised and is now
available online for this edition. Several features, in addition to sample questions, are
provided. Career development exercises are provided with two purposes. The first pur-
pose is to have students understand their own career development by using the theory
or theories described in the chapter. The second purpose is to provide students with ex-
ercises that they may use in their counseling work as students or professionals. Another
section of the student manual uses a case study approach to learning the theory. At vari-
ous points in the case, multiple-choice questions are asked about the case. Open-ended
questions are asked about how theory addresses general and cultural issues. The final
section has multiple-choice and true and false review questions. Attention has been given
to making the student manual interesting and relevant.
To provide instructors with materials that they may use in the classroom and to assist
in preparation of lectures and examinations, I have expanded the instructor’s manual.
Numerous discussion questions have been included for each chapter, as well as sugges-
tions for role-playing of counseling in class. For examinations, I have prepared more
than 500 multiple-choice questions (some questions that appeared in the previous
edition of the manual have been revised for clarity). Also, I have expanded the Power-
Point slides that instructors may use in their classroom presentations. I believe that all
the materials I have provided will suggest other classroom exercises, slides, or examina-
tion questions that instructors may want to develop for their own purposes.

Acknowledgments
Many people have been extremely helpful in reading one or more chapters of the book. I
would like to thank the following people who have made suggestions for the sixth edition
of this book: Sherry Latson, Amberton University; Cyrus Williams, Regent University;
Thomson Ling, Ph.D., Caldwell College; Charles Crews, Texas Tech University; Jared F.
Edwards, Ph.D., Southwestern Oklahoma State University; Bill McHenry, Texas A&M
University; Ernest Biller, University of Idaho; John Patrick, California University of
Pennsylvania; and H. L. Harris, University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Additionally I
would like to thank Thomson Ling, Ph.D., of Caldwell College and Jared F. Edwards,
Ph.D., of Southwestern Oklahoma State University for reviewing the revised manuscript
for the sixth edition of this book.
I would also like to thank Karen J. Forbes of Lafayette College and Matthew R. Elliott of
Holy Cross College, who read several chapters early on and made suggestions for the ulti-
mate form that this book would take. The following people read, commented on, or sup-
plied materials for chapters in this book: Linda Gottfredson, James E. Hoffman, Lawrence
Hotchkiss, Janice Jordan, Charles Link, Mary C. Miller, and Steven M. Sciscione of the
University of Delaware; Janet Lenz, Gary Peterson, Robert Reardon, and James Sampson
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
xviii Preface for Instructors

of Florida State University; Debra Bloch of the University of Maryland at Baltimore; David
Blustein of Boston College; Rene V. Dawis of the University of Minnesota; Kimberly Ewing
of Loyola University of Baltimore; Gail Hackett of the University of Arizona; John L.
Holland; Richard T. Lapan of the University of Massachusetts; David Lubinski of
Vanderbilt University; John D. Krumboltz of Stanford University; Robert Lent of the
University of Maryland; James Rounds of the University of Chicago; Mark L. Savickas
of Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine; Michael Smith of McGill
University; Susan Phillips of the State University of New York at Albany; Terence J. G.
Tracey of Arizona State University; Fred Vondracek of Pennsylvania State University;
Kathleen Green, Colleen Teixeira Moffat, Luke Spreen, and Stephanie White of the
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics; and Richard Young of the University of
British Columbia.
The staff at the Library of the University of Delaware was very helpful in providing
resources and assistance for writing this new edition. I would especially like to thank
Susan Brynteson, Director of Libraries, and Jonathan Jeffrey, Associate Librarian, for
their assistance. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Jane, for her patience and under-
standing while this book was being prepared.

RSS

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CHAPTER 1
Introduction

CHAPTER Being satisfied with one’s career is one of the most important aspects of an
HIGHLIGHTS individual’s personal happiness. Career concerns occur throughout one’s lifetime.
THE ROLE OF As young children are exposed to their parents’ occupations, television programs,
THEORY IN and the people around them, they become aware of career opportunities and
PSYCHOLOGY choices. This exposure becomes broader and deeper throughout elementary
COUNSELORS’ USE school, middle school, and high school. It is difficult for students not to be over-
OF CAREER
DEVELOPMENT
whelmed by the many choices of occupations facing them. After high school,
THEORY temporary and transitional occupations are often chosen, with continued adjust-
COUNSELOR SKILLS ment throughout one’s life span to increase career satisfaction. During retire-
Helping Skills
ment, questions of career satisfaction may be important. Because approximately
Assessment
half of a person’s waking hours are spent working, dissatisfaction with career
Instruments demands can spread into other parts of one’s life. It is not uncommon for job
GOALS OF CAREER dissatisfaction to affect relationships with family and friends. People who are dis-
COUNSELING satisfied with their work or find it boring or monotonous must look for satisfac-
GOALS, CAREER tion in other areas of their lives, such as leisure and family. For many people,
DEVELOPMENT however, these other satisfactions do not compensate for the frustration they
THEORY, AND
ETHICS experience at work. The opportunity to help someone adjust to a selected career
is an opportunity to affect a person’s life positively, in meaningful and significant
CAREER
DEVELOPMENT OF ways.
WOMEN The knowledge that several hours spent in counseling can greatly influence the
CAREER outcome of an individual’s life is an exciting challenge to the counselor. Indivi-
DEVELOPMENT OF duals unfamiliar with career counseling have sometimes compartmentalized
CULTURALLY
DIVERSE counseling by saying there is personal counseling, and then there is career
POPULATIONS counseling. In describing more than 30 years of counseling with career issues,
Mark Miller (2009) states “I leave this field pretty much with the same viewpoint
I had when I started: Career counseling is nearly indistinguishable from personal
counseling” (p. 47). Vernon Zunker addresses the relationship of career and per-
sonal counseling in his book, Career, Work, and, Mental, Health: Integrating
Career and Personal Counseling (2008). In editing a special section of The Career
Development Quarterly, Linda Subich (1993) asked the question: “How personal
is career counseling?” She received 32 submissions, of which 10 were published.
The clear, virtually unanimous answer was “Very personal.” These respondents
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
1
2 Chapter 1: Introduction

recognized that personal issues are frequently a part of career counseling and
that career issues are often prominent in personal counseling, thus making
the distinction between the two unclear. A survey of experts in
vocational psychology shows that they use the same counseling skills in dealing
with career issues as they do in dealing with other personal counseling issues
(Whiston, Lindeman, Rahardja, & Reed, 2005). Career counseling can include
discussion of many different personal, familial, and cultural issues (Maxwell,
2007). Using a group approach, one study examined a group for college couples
that addressed both romantic and career issues (Gibbons & Shurts, 2010). In a
study of adults, career decisions were shown to be a part of decisions regarding
relationships, a way of making meaning in one’s life, and deciding about finan-
cial matters (Amundson, Borgen, Iaquinta, Butterfield, & Koert, 2010). These
articles point out the personal nature of career counseling from many vantage
points. Because career issues do not always have the immediate impact on coun-
selors that negative or stressful events or feelings may have, career issues may be
neglected or dismissed if they are not examined thoroughly.
A wide variety of approaches have been used in career counseling, some of
which adapt techniques from personal counseling. For example, Nevo and Wise-
man (2002) use Mann’s short-term dynamic psychotherapy as a model for career
counseling. This model stresses the importance of the therapeutic relationship,
client activities over their life span, and active counselor participation. Other wri-
ters address career counseling for individuals with marital concerns such as those
of battered women (Brown et al., 2005). Recently, attention has been given to gay
and lesbian clients. For lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth, sexual identity conflicts
and lack of social support can interfere with or slow the process of career deci-
sion making (Schmidt & Nilsson, 2006). Datti (2009) provides suggestions for
career counseling with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. Focusing
on lesbian clients, Bieschke and Toepfer-Hendey (2006) and Hook and Bowman
(2008) suggest different models of career counseling to help them deal with per-
sonal and social issues affecting career concerns. Increasingly, counselors are
applying techniques from personal counseling to a variety of culturally diverse
groups and to a variety of issues, such as those described in this paragraph.
In this textbook, numerous case examples are used to illustrate the application
of career development theory to counseling. Most of the examples have personal
and career components. For instance, Winifred (Chapter 4) is a 45-year-old farmer
who is faced with the difficulty of changing jobs after experiencing chronic back
pain. Chester (Chapter 5) is a high school dropout whose boredom and frustration
with his life and work are affecting his personal life. George (Chapter 6) is tense
and anxious at work and has difficulty dealing with the employees he supervises.
Arthur (Chapter 7), a fourth-grade student, is starting to fall behind in school, is
withdrawing from his peers, and is frustrated by reading. Personal issues confront
Chad (Chapter 8) as he decides between selling drugs and staying in school to pre-
pare for a career. Matthew (Chapter 9) is 64 years old and is confused and afraid as
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Chapter 1: Introduction 3

he faces imminent retirement. Having been laid off from a job that he has had for
23 years, John, who is 55, is angry and depressed (Chapter 10). The trauma of sex-
ual harassment and racial discrimination forces Roberta (Chapter 10) to deal with
her anger and the perpetrators of the harassment. Dennis, a 25-year-old grocery
store manager, lives at home and struggles to cope with his father’s negative views
of him (Chapter 11). Lacking self-confidence and tending to procrastinate, Tiffany
is having difficulty leaving a job she dislikes to train for a new career (Chapter 11).
Maria (Chapter 12), a high school junior, is unsure of her ability to make decisions.
Joella (Chapter 12) finds meaning in her work through relationships with others,
even though the work itself is not satisfactory to her. Planning to be a professional
football player, Xavier has broken his leg and is upset that his dreams for the future
now seem uncertain (Chapter 13). Sharon (Chapter 14) is unsure of herself, espe-
cially her academic ability; this lack of self-efficacy plays a role in her dilemma
about her career choice. Her reactions are affected by her relationships with
her friends and family. Parnell’s (Chapter 15) disciplinary problems in college
have put stress on his relationships with his family members and have caused
him to think about his decisions regarding his future career and his decision making
in general. A spiritual approach to career decision making is illustrated through
Karen’s struggle with the loss of her job and the need to provide income for her
family (Chapter 15). These are a sampling of some of the cases that appear in this
textbook, many of which are concerned with both personal and career issues.
Life issues and problems occur at many different times. The developmental
nature of career concerns can be seen in the case of Lucy, who is discussed in
Chapters 7, 8, and 9. As a fifth-grade student, she is upset about her mother
forcing her father out of the house, and her reaction affects her interactions at
school and within her family. At 15 years old, the pressures on Lucy from her
father and her boyfriend to go to nursing school rather than to medical school
are affecting her self-confidence and her ability to make decisions. At 28 years
old, Lucy is hurting from the breakup of a 3-year relationship and is deciding
whether to return to school to become a physician. These personal and career
issues are intertwined, as they are for many clients.
One definition of career refers to roles individuals play over their lifetime
(Zunker, 2012). The roles may include leisure and community service, as well
as other activities. The case studies presented in this book offer snapshots of a
person’s career or an aspect of a person’s working and leisure behavior. In this
textbook, career choice applies to decisions that individuals make at any point in
their career about particular work, leisure, or other activities that they choose to
pursue at that time. The focus is on the individual, in contrast to the terms job,
occupation, and work. In this textbook, jobs refer to positions requiring similar
skills within one organization. Occupations refer to similar jobs found in many
organizations. Occupations exist regardless of whether individuals are employed
in them. Career refers to the lifetime pursuits of the individual. Work, a term
used occasionally in this text, refers to purposeful activity to earn money or other
Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
4 Chapter 1: Introduction

reward and possibly to produce a product or service for others. Although work
often is used to describe an unpleasant activity, work can be pleasant and reward-
ing economically, spiritually, socially, or personally. Other authors may define
work as effort spent in an activity, or they may have other definitions of work.
Career development theory can serve as a guide for career counseling and for
problems similar to those described earlier. By tying together research about
career choice and adjustment with ideas about these issues, career development
theorists have provided a conceptual framework within which to view the types
of career problems that emerge during a person’s lifetime. To help you under-
stand these theories, the role of theory in psychology is discussed first.

The Role of Theory in Psychology


In reviewing the role of theory in psychology, Heinen (1985) describes theory as “a
group of logically organized laws or relationships that constitute explanation in a disci-
pline” (p. 414). Theory has been particularly important in the development of physical
and biological science. Within psychology, theory has made a distinct impact in the area
of learning (Henriques, 2011). When applied to career development, theory becomes
cruder and less precise. Career development theory attempts to explain behavior that
occurs over many years and is made up of reactions to thousands of situations (for example,
school), experiences (for example, hobbies), and people (for example, parents).
Regardless of the type of theory, there are certain general principles for judging the
appropriateness of a theory. The following are criteria by which career development the-
ories can be evaluated (Fawcett & Downs, 1986; Franck, 2002; Hanzel, 1999; Snow, 1973,
Watson 2012).
1. Theories should be explicit about their rules and theorems. Terms that are used in describing
these rules should be clear. Theories that attempt to explain how people make career
choices often have difficulty in defining terms such as growth, development, and self-
concept. Theories about career selection are also difficult to make. In general, the
broader the theory, the more difficult it is to be specific about the terms that are used.
2. Theories should be precise about the limitations of their predictions. Theories differ in
the breadth of behavior that they attempt to predict. For example, some theories
attempt to explain career development for women, some for both men and women,
and some for people of different age groups. Some theories attempt to explain voca-
tional choice, others try to explain how people adjust to this choice, and still others
explain both. It is important to understand what the subject of the theory is. Criti-
cizing a theory for not doing something that it does not set out to do is unfair.
3. When theories are developed, they need to be tested. Testing a theory is accomplished
by doing research that can be expressed in terms of quantitative relationships. By
doing research studies that use clear and measurable terms, investigators can best
determine if data are in agreement with the theory. Within the field of career devel-
opment, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether research supports a theory.
The reason may be that an investigator has defined terms in a different way from
the theorist or has used an unrepresentative sample to make predictions or general-
izations. For example, if a theorist attempts to explain how all people make choices,
the research samples should include both men and women across a broad range of
cultural, social, and financial backgrounds. Sometimes evidence from a research
study is unclear, supporting some propositions of a theory but not others, or supporting
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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
The next letter, dated May, 1801, Keswick, speaks of ill health, and
“the habits of irresolution which are its worst consequences,”
forbidding him to rely on himself. Mr. S. had solicited him to write,
and offered terms, and it appears that he did form a new
engagement for the Paper about that time. In a letter of Sept. 1801,
he says, “I am not so blinded by authorship as to believe that what I
have done is at all adequate to the money I have received.” Mr.
Stuart then produces a letter with the postmark Bridgewater, of Jan.
19, 1802.[33] These letters show, he says, that in July and October
1800, in May 1801, on the 30th of September 1801, Coleridge was
at Keswick, that in January 1802, he was at Stowey, that he could
not therefore have materially contributed to the success of The
Morning Post. “In this last year,” says Mr. Stuart, “his Letters to
Judge Fletcher, and on Mr. Fox, at Paris, were published.” The former
were not published till 1814. The six letters appeared in The Courier
on Sept. 20th, 29th, Oct. 21st, Nov. 2nd, Dec. 3rd, 6th, 9th and
10th. The latter appeared on the 4th and 9th of Nov. 1802. Mr.
Stuart speaks of it as a mistake in those who have supposed that the
coolness of Fox to Sir James Mackintosh was occasioned by his
ascribing this “violent philippic,” as Lamb called it, to him (Sir
James). “On those to Judge Fletcher,” he says, “and many other such
essays, as being rather fit for pamphlets than newspapers, I did not
set much value.” On this subject hear Coleridge himself in a letter[34]
dated June 4th, 1811, when he was engaged with Mr. Street.

Letter 150. To Daniel Stuart


“Freshness of effect belongs to a newspaper and distinguishes it
from a literary book: the former being the Zenith and the latter the
Nadir, with a number of intermediate degrees, occupied by
pamphlets, magazines, reviews, etc. Besides, in a daily paper, with
advertisements proportioned to its large sale, what is deferred must
four times in five be extinguished. A newspaper is a market for
flowers and vegetables, rather than a granary or conservatory; and
the drawer of its Editor a common burial ground, not a catacomb for
embalmed mummies, in which the defunct are preserved to serve in
after times as medicines for the living.”
This freshness of effect Coleridge scarcely ever gave to either The
Morning Post or The Courier. He was occasionally in London during
my time, in The Morning Post it is true, but he never gave the daily
bread. He was mostly at Keswick. * * * A few months in 1800, and a
few weeks in 1802, that was all the time he ever wasted on The
Morning Post, and as for The Courier, it accepted his proffered
services as a favour done to him,” etc.
After speaking again of the former paper, he says, “I could give
many more reasons for its rise than those I gave in my former letter,
and among others I would include Coleridge’s occasional writings,
though to them I would not set down more than one hundredth part
of the cause of success, much as I esteemed his writings and much
as I would have given for a regular daily assistance by him. But he
never wrote a thing I requested, and, I think I may add, he never
wrote a thing I expected. In proof of this he promised me at my
earnest and endless request, the character of Buonaparte, which he
himself, at first of his own mere motion, had promised; he promised
it letter after letter, year after year, for ten years (last for The
Courier), yet never wrote it. Could Coleridge and I place ourselves
thirty-eight years back, and he be so far a man of business as to
write three or four hours a day, there is nothing I would not pay for
his assistance. I would take him into partnership,” (which, I think,
my Father would have declined,) “and I would enable him to make a
large fortune. To write the leading paragraph of a newspaper I
would prefer him to Mackintosh, Burke, or any man I ever heard of.
His observations not only were confirmed by good sense, but
displayed extensive knowledge, deep thought and well-grounded
foresight; they were so brilliantly ornamented, so classically
delightful. They were the writings of a Scholar, a Gentleman and a
Statesman, without personal sarcasm or illiberality of any kind. But
when Coleridge wrote in his study without being pressed, he
wandered and lost himself. He should always have had the printer’s
devil at his elbow with ‘Sir, the printers want copy.’
“So far then with regard to The Morning Post, which I finally left in
August, 1803. Throughout the last year, during my most rapid
success, Coleridge did not, I believe, write a line for me. Seven
months afterwards I find Coleridge at Portsmouth, on his way to
Malta.” Mr. Stuart proceeds to state that Mr. C. returned to England
in the summer of 1806, that in 1807 he was engaged with his Play
at Drury Lane Theatre, early in 1808 gave his lectures at the Royal
Institution, at the end of that year began his plan of The Friend,
which took him up till towards the end of 1809—in 1811 proposed to
write for The Courier on a salary. Mr. Stuart mentions that the Essays
on the Spaniards were sent in the end of 1809 by Mr. Coleridge, as
some return for sums he had expended on his account, not on his
(Mr. Stuart’s) solicitation. He says that Mr. C. wrote in The Courier for
his own convenience, his other literary projects having failed, and
that he wrote for it against the will of Mr. Street, the Editor, who, in
accepting his services, only yielded to his (Mr. S.’s) suggestion. “The
Courier,” he says, “required no assistance. It was, and had long
been, the evening paper of the highest circulation.” In another letter,
dated 7th September 1835, he speaks thus: “The Courier indeed
sold 8000 daily for some years, but when Street and I purchased it
at a good price in June, 1799, it sold nearly 2000, and had the
reputation of selling more. It was the apostasy of The Sun in 1803,
Street’s good management, its early intelligence, and the importance
of public events, that raised The Courier.” In the same letter he says,
“Could Coleridge have written the leading paragraph daily his
services would have been invaluable, but an occasional essay or two
could produce little effect. It was early and ample accounts of
domestic occurrences, as Trials, Executions, etc. etc., exclusively
early Irish news; the earliest French news; full Parliamentary
Debates; Corn Riots in 1800; Procession proclaiming Peace; the
attack on the King by Hatfield at the Theatre; the arrest of Arthur
O’Connor, respecting which I was examined at the Privy Council: it
was the earliest and fullest accounts of such things as these, while
the other papers were negligent, that raised The Morning Post from
350, when I took it in August, 1795, to 4500, when I sold it in
August, 1803, and then no other daily morning paper sold above
3000. It was unremitting attention and success in giving the best
and earliest accounts of occurrences that made The Morning Post,
and not the writings of any one, though good writing is always an
important feature. I have known the Paper served more by a minute,
picturesque, lively account of the ascension of a balloon than ever it
was by any piece of writing. There is a great difference among
newspapers in this respect. Most of the Sunday Papers, calling
themselves Newspapers, have no news, only political essays, which
are read by the working-classes, and which in those papers produce
astonishing success.” In other letters he says: “The reputation of the
writings of any man, the mere reputation of them, would not serve,
or in the very slightest degree serve, any daily newspaper.”
“Mackintosh’s reputation as a political writer was then much higher
than that of Coleridge, and he was my brother-in-law, known to
have written for the Paper, especially during one year (1795–6), and
to be on good terms with me, yet I must confess that even to the
reputation of his writing for the Paper I never ascribed any part of its
success.”
It does not appear from Mr. Stuart how many essays in all Mr.
Coleridge contributed to The Morning Post and The Courier. Mr. C.
himself mentions several in the tenth chapter of the Biographia
Literaria. All these have been copied, and will be republished
hereafter.[35] I happen to possess also his contributions to The
Courier in 1811. They are numerous, though not daily; which I have
now no means of ascertaining. The Critique on Bertram first
appeared in that Paper, I believe in 1816. Mr. Stuart admits that
some of the poems published by Mr. C. in The Morning Post before
his going to Germany made a “great impression:” that on Mr. C.’s
proposing “personally on the spot and by daily exertion to assist him
in the conduct of the Paper,” he “grasped at the engagement,” and
“no doubt solicited” him “in the most earnest manner to enter upon
it;” that his “writings produced a greater effect in The Morning Post
than any others.” In his letter of September 19, 1835, Mr. S. says
“The most remarkable things Coleridge published in The Morning
Post were The Devil’s Thoughts and the Character of Pitt. Each of
these made a sensation, which any writings unconnected with the
news of the day rarely did.” Elsewhere he says, “Several hundred
sheets extra were sold by them, and the paper was in demand for
days and weeks afterwards. Coleridge promised a pair of portraits,
Pitt and Buonaparte. I could not walk a hundred yards in the streets
but I was stopped by inquiries, ‘When shall we have Buonaparte?’
One of the most eager of these inquirers was Dr. Moore, author of
Zeluco.” In the letter mentioned just above he says “At one time
Coleridge engaged to write daily for The Courier on the news of the
day, and he did attend very regularly and wrote; but as it was in the
spring, when the Paper was overwhelmed with debates and
advertisements (and Street always preferring news, and a short
notice of it in a leading paragraph to any writing however brilliant,)
little or nothing that he wrote was inserted from want of room. Of
this he repeatedly complained to me, saying that he would not
continue to receive a salary without rendering services. I answered,
‘Wait till Parliament is up; we shall then have ample room, and shall
be obliged to you for all you can give us.’ When Parliament rose
Coleridge disappeared, or at least discontinued his services.”
The time here spoken of was in June, 1811. In April he had
proposed to Mr. Stuart a particular plan of writing for The Courier,
and on May 5, he writes to that gentleman, that he had stated and
particularized this proposal to Mr. Street, and “found a full and in all
appearance a warm assent.” Mr. Street, he says, “expressed himself
highly pleased both at the thought of my assistance in general, and
with the specific plan of assistance. There was no doubt, he said,
that it would be of great service to the Paper.”
Mr. Stuart has been offended by Mr. Coleridge’s saying that he
“employed the prime and manhood of his intellect in these labours,”
namely for the Papers; that they “added nothing to his fortune or
reputation;” that the “industry of the week supplied the necessities
of the week.” This he has considered as a reproach to himself, and
an unjust one. It was not—Mr. Stuart himself saw that it was not—so
intended; Mr. Coleridge’s only object was to show that he had not
altogether suffered his talents to “rust away without any efficient
exertion for his own good or that of his fellow-creatures;” that he
had laboured more than would appear from the number and size of
the books he had produced, and in whatever he wrote had aimed
not merely to supply his own temporal wants, but to benefit his
readers by bringing high principles in view. “For, while cabbage-
stalks rot on dunghills,” says he, in a letter[36] to the late Editor of
The Morning Post, “I will never write what, or for what, I do not
think right. All that prudence can justify is not to write what at
certain times one may yet think.” But Mr. Stuart thought that the
Public would draw inferences from Mr. C.’s language injurious to
himself, though it was not meant of him; and hence he gave the
details which I have thought it right to bring forward. I have no
doubt that Mr. Coleridge had an exaggerated impression of the
amount of his labours for The Morning Post and The Courier, and
that when he said that he had raised the sale of the former from a
low number to 7000 daily, he mistook the sale of the latter, which,
Mr. Stuart admits, may have been 7000 per day in 1811, when he
wrote for it constantly, with that of The Morning Post, which never
sold above 4500. Mr. Stuart says truly “Coleridge had a defective
memory, from want of interest in common things;” and of this he
brings forward a strong instance. I think my Father’s example and
experience go to prove that Newspaper reading must ever be more
or less injurious to the public mind; high and careful writing for the
daily journal will never answer: who could furnish noble views and a
refined moral commentary on public events and occurrences every
day of the week, or even every other day, and obtain a
proportionate recompense? On the other hand, a coarse or low sort
of writing on the important subjects, with which the journal deals,
must do mischief. No one will deny that the character of Mr. C.’s
articles was such as he has described; he would naturally be more
alive to marks of the impression made by what he wrote in particular
than any one else, even the Editor; and men are apt to judge of
their labours by intensity as much as by quantity. He perhaps
expended more thought on some of those essays, of which Mr.
Street and even Mr. Stuart thought lightly, than would have served to
furnish a large amount of ordinary serviceable matter. Mr. Stuart
observes, “He never had a prime and manhood of intellect in the
sense in which he speaks of it in the Lit. Biography. He had indeed
the great mind, the great powers, but he could not use them for the
press with regularity and vigour.[37] He was always ill.” This may
have been true; yet it was during what ought to have been the best
years of his life that he wrote for the Papers, and doubtless what he
did produce helped to exhaust his scanty stock of bodily power, and
to prevent him from writing as many books as he might have done,
had circumstances permitted him to use his pen, not for procuring
“the necessities of the week,” but in the manner most congenial to
his own mind, and ultimately most useful to the public. “Such things
as The Morning Post and money,” says Mr. S., in The Gentleman’s
Magazine, “never settled upon his mind.” I believe that such things
unsettled his mind, and made him, as the lampooner said, with a
somewhat different allusion, “Like to a man on double business
bound, who both neglects.” This was a trouble to himself and all
connected with him. Le ciel nous vend toujours les biens qu’il nous
prodigue, may be applied to my poor Father emphatically.
In regard to the remuneration he received, I do not bring forward
the particulars given by Mr. Stuart of his liberal dealing with Mr.
Coleridge, simply because the rehearsal of them would be tedious,
and could answer no end. Such details may be superseded by the
general declaration, that I believe my Father to have received from
Mr. Stuart far more than the market value of his contributions to the
Papers which that gentleman was concerned in. Mr. Stuart says that
he “paid at the time as highly as such writings were paid for,” and to
Mr. Coleridge’s satisfaction, which my Father’s own letters certainly
testify; and concludes the account of sums advanced by him to Mr.
C., when he was not writing for the paper, by saying that he had “at
least £700 of him beside many acts of kindness.” A considerable part
of this was spent on stamps and paper for The Friend; two hundred
of it was given after the publication of the Biographia Literaria.
Mr. Coleridge expressed his esteem for Mr. Stuart and sense of his
kindness very strongly in letters to himself, but not more strongly
than to others. He speaks of him in a letter written about the
beginning of 1809, addressed to a gentleman of the Quaker
persuasion at Leeds, as “a man of the most consummate knowledge
of the world, managed by a thorough strong and sound judgment,
and rendered innocuous by a good heart”—as a “most wise,
disinterested, kind, and constant friend.” In a letter to my Mother,
written on his return from Malta, he says, “Stuart is a friend, and a
friend indeed.”
I have thought it right to bring forward these particulars,—(I and
those equally concerned with myself)—not only out of a regard to
truth and openness, that the language of this work respecting The
Morning Post and The Courier may not be interpreted in any way
contrary to fact, which, I think, it need not be; but also in gratitude
to a man who was serviceable and friendly to my Father during
many years of his life; who appreciated his merits as a prose writer
when they were not generally known and acknowledged; and by
whose aid his principal prose work, The Friend, was brought before
the public. I do not complain in the least of his stating the facts of
my Father’s newspaper writings; in the manner in which this was
done—as was pointed out at the time—there was something to
complain of. Let me add that I consider his representation of my
Father’s feelings on certain occasions altogether incredible, and
deeply regret these pieces of bad construing, dictated by
resentment, in one who was once so truly his friend.
My Father certainly does not assert, as Mr. Stuart represents him as
having asserted in the Literary Biography, that he “made the
fortunes of The Morning Post and The Courier, and was inadequately
paid.” He speaks of his writings as having been in furtherance of
Government. I have no doubt he thought that they were serviceable
to Government and to his country, and that while they brought upon
him the enmity of the anti-ministerial and Buonapartean party, and
every possible hindrance to his literary career which the most hostile
and contemptuous criticism of a leading journal could effect, they
were unrewarded in any other quarter. There was truth in one half of
Hazlitt’s sarcasm, “his politics turned—but not to account.” “From
Government, or the friends of Government!” says Mr. Stuart, “Why,
Coleridge was attacking Pitt and Lord Grenville in 1800, who were at
the head of the Government. In 1801, when the Addingtons came
into power, he wrote little or nothing in The Morning Post; in the
autumn of 1802 he wrote one or two able essays against
Buonaparte in relation to the Peace of Amiens, and he published in
that paper, at that time, a letter or two to Judge Fletcher.” This last
sentence is a double mistake, as I have already shown. “At that time
the newspaper press generally condemned the conduct of
Buonaparte in the severest manner: and no part of it more severely
than The Morning Post by my own writings. Cobbett attacked Fox,
etc., but The Morning Post was the most distinguished on this
subject, and the increase of its circulation was great. The qualified
opposition to Government was not given to Pitt’s ministry, but to
Addington’s. To Pitt The Morning Post was always, in my time,
decidedly opposed. I supported Addington against Buonaparte,
during the Peace of Amiens, with all my power, and in the summer
of 1803 Mr. Estcourt came to me with a message of thanks from the
prime minister, Mr. A. offering anything I wished. I declined the offer.
It was not till the summer of 1804, a year after I had finally left The
Morning Post that, in The Courier, I supported Pitt against
Buonaparte, on the same grounds I had supported Mr. Addington,
Pitt having become again prime minister, to protect Lord Melville
against the fifth clause. Coleridge confuses things. The qualified
support of the ministry, he alludes to, applies wholly to The Courier.”
I do not see the material discrepancy between this statement and
my Father’s, when he says that The Morning Post was “anti-
ministerial, indeed, but with far greater earnestness and zeal, both
anti-jacobin and anti-gallican,” and that it proved a far more useful
ally to the Government in its most important objects, in consequence
of its being generally considered moderately anti-ministerial, than if
it had been the avowed eulogist of Mr. Pitt; “that the rapid increase
in the sale of The Morning Post is a pledge that genuine impartiality
with a respectable portion of literary talent will secure the success of
a newspaper without ministerial patronage,” and that from “the
commencement of the Addington administration” whatever he
himself had written “in The Morning Post or Courier was in defence
of Government.” In the preceding paragraph he argues that neither
Mr. Percival nor “the present administration” pursued the plans of Mr.
Pitt.
In what degree my Father’s writings contributed to the reputation
and success of The Morning Post cannot at this distance of time be
precisely settled. It must indeed be difficult to say what occasions
success in such enterprises, if Mr. Stuart’s own brother could
attribute that of The Morning Post to Sir James Mackintosh, “though
with less reason even than if he had ascribed it to Coleridge.” The
long story told to show that booksellers were not aware of Mr. C.’s
having produced any effect on the paper, and when they set up a
rival journal, never cared to obtain his services, but eagerly secured
those of Mr. Stuart’s assistant, George Lane, does not quite decide
the question; for booksellers, though, as Mr. Stuart says, “knowing
men” in such matters, are not omniscient even in what concerns
their own business. If the anti-gallican policy of The Morning Post
“increased its circulation,” I cannot but think that the influence of my
Father’s writings,[38] though not numerous, and indirectly of his
intercourse with the Editor,—who rates his conversational powers as
highly as it is usual to rate them—in directing the tone and
determining the principles of the paper, must have served it
materially. I believe him to have been the anti-gallican spirit that
governed The Morning Post, though he may not have performed as
much of the letter as he fancied.
I shall conclude this subject with quoting part of a letter of my
Father’s on the subject of The Courier, to which Mr. Stuart, to whom
it was addressed, declares himself to have replied, that “as long as
he actively interfered, the Paper was conducted on the independent
principles alluded to by Coleridge,” but that, for reasons which he
states, he found it best, from the year 1811, to “leave Street entirely
to his own course;” and “so it gradually slid into a mere ministerial
journal—an instrument of the Treasury:” “acquired a high character
for being the organ of Government, and obtained a great circulation;
but became odious to the mob—excited by the falsehoods of the
weekly journals.”

Letter 151. To Stuart[39]


Wednesday, 8th May, 1816.
James Gillman’s, Esq., Surgeon,
Highgate.
My dear Stuart,
Since you left me, I have been reflecting a great deal on the subject
of the Catholic question, and somewhat on The Courier in general.
With all my weight of faults, (and no one is less likely to underrate
them than myself), a tendency to be influenced by selfish motives in
my friendships, or even in the cultivation of my acquaintance, will
not, I am sure, be by you placed among them. When we first knew
each other, it was perhaps the most interesting period of both our
lives, at the very turn of the flood; and I can never cease to reflect
with affectionate delight on the steadiness and independence of your
conduct and principles, and how, for so many years, with little
assistance from others, and with one main guide, a sympathizing
tact for the real sense, feeling, and impulses of the respectable part
of the English nation, you went on so auspiciously, and likewise so
effectively. It is far, very far, from being an hyperbole to affirm, that
you did more against the French scheme of Continental domination
than the Duke of Wellington has done; or rather, Wellington could
neither have been supplied by the Ministers, nor the Ministers
supported by the nation, but for the tone first given, and then
constantly kept up by the plain, un-ministerial, anti-opposition, anti-
Jacobin, anti-Gallican, anti-Napoleon spirit of your writings, aided by
a colloquial style and evident good sense, in which, as acting on an
immense mass of knowledge of existing men and existing
circumstances, you are superior to any man I ever met with in my
life-time. Indeed you are the only human being, of whom I can say
with severe truth, that I never conversed with you for an hour
without rememberable instruction; and with the same simplicity I
dare affirm my belief, that my greater knowledge of man has been
useful to you, though, from the nature of things, not so useful as
your knowledge of men has been to me.
Now, with such convictions, my dear Stuart, how is it possible that I
can look back on the conduct of The Courier, from the period of the
Duke of York’s restoration, without some pain? You cannot be
seriously offended or affronted with me, if, in this deep confidence
and in a letter, which, or its contents, can meet no eye but your
own, I venture to declare, that though since then much has been
done, very much of high utility to the country, by and under Mr.
Street, yet The Courier itself has gradually lost that sanctifying spirit
which was the life of its life, and without which, even the best and
soundest principles lose half their effect on the human mind; I
mean, the faith in the faith of the person and paper which brings
them forward. They are attributed to the accident of their happening
to be for such a side, or for such a party. In short, there is no longer
any root in the paper, out of which all the various branches and
fruits, and even fluttering leaves, are seen or believed to grow. But it
is the old tree, barked round above the root, though the circular
decortication is so small and so neatly filled up and coloured as to be
scarcely visible but in its effects, excellent fruit still hanging on the
boughs, but they are tied on by threads and hairs.
In all this I am well aware, that you are no otherwise to be blamed
than in permitting that which without disturbance to your heart and
tranquillity, you could not, perhaps, have prevented or effectively
modified. But the whole plan of Street seems to me to have been
motiveless from the beginning, or at least affected by the grossest
miscalculations, in respect even of pecuniary interests. For, had the
paper maintained and asserted not only its independence, but its
appearance of it;—it is true that Mr. Street might not have had Mr. A.
to dine with him, or received as many nods and shakes of the hand
from Lord this or that; but at least equally true, that the ministry
would have been far more effectively served, and that (I speak from
facts), both the paper and its conductor would have been held by
the adherents of ministers in far higher respect; and after all,
ministers do not love newspapers in their hearts, not even those that
support them; indeed it seems epidemic among Parliament men in
general to affect to look down upon and despise newspapers, to
which they owe 999/1000 of their influence and character, and at
least 3/5ths of their knowledge and phraseology. Enough! burn the
letter, and forgive the writer, for the purity and affectionateness of
his motive.”—Quoted from the Gentleman’s Magazine of June, 1838.
[40]

One other point connected with Mr. C.’s writings for public journals I
must advert to before concluding this chapter. Mr. Cottle finds want
of memory in some part of the narrative, contained in this work,
respecting the publication of The Watchman; it is as well to let him
tell the story in his own way, which he does as follows. “The plain
fact is, I purchased the whole of the paper for The Watchman,
allowing Mr. C. to have it at prime cost, and receiving small sums
from Mr. C. occasionally, in liquidation. I became responsible, also,
with Mr. B. for printing the work, by which means, I reduced the
price per sheet, as a bookseller (1000), from fifty shillings to thirty-
five shillings. Mr. C. paid me for the paper in fractions, as he found it
convenient, but from the imperfection of Mr. Coleridge’s own receipts
I never received the whole. It was a losing concern altogether, and I
was willing, and did bear, uncomplaining, my portion of the loss.
There is some difference between this statement, and that of Mr.
Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria. A defect of memory must have
existed, arising out of the lapse of twenty-two years; but my notices,
made at the time, did not admit of mistake. There were but twenty
sheets in the whole ten numbers of The Watchman, which, at thirty-
five shillings per sheet, came to only thirty-five pounds. The paper
amounted to much more than the printing.
“I cannot refrain from observing further, that my loss was
augmented from another cause. Mr. C. states in the above work, that
his London publisher never paid him ‘one farthing,’ but ‘set him at
defiance.’ I also was more than his equal companion in this
misfortune. The thirty copies of Mr. C.’s poems, and the six ‘Joans of
Arc’ (referred to in the preceding letter)[41] found a ready sale, by
this said ‘indefatigable London publisher,’ and large and fresh orders
were received, so that Mr. Coleridge and myself successively
participated in two very opposite sets of feeling; the one of
exultation that our publications had found so good a sale; and the
other of depression, that the time of payment never arrived!”
I take this opportunity of expressing my sense of many kind acts and
much friendly conduct of Mr. Cottle towards my Father, often spoken
of to me by my dear departed Mother, into whose heart all benefits
sank deep, and by whom he was ever remembered with respect and
affection. If I still regard with any disapproval his publication of
letters exposing his friend’s unhappy bondage to opium and
consequent embarrassments and deep distress of mind, it is not that
I would have wished a broad influencive fact in the history of one
whose peculiar gifts had made him in some degree an object of
public interest, to be finally concealed, supposing it to be attested,
as this has been, by clear unambiguous documents. I agree with Mr.
Cottle in thinking that he would himself have desired, even to the
last, that whatever benefit the world might obtain by the knowledge
of his sufferings from opium,—the calamity which the unregulated
use of this drug had been to him—into which he first fell ignorantly
and innocently, (not as Mr. De Quincey has said, to restore the “riot
of his animal spirits,” when “youthful blood no longer sustained it,”
but as a relief from bodily pain and nervous irritation)—that others
might avoid the rock, on which so great a part of his happiness for
so long a time was wrecked; and this from the same benevolent
feeling, which prompted him earnestly to desire that his body should
be opened after his death, in the hope that some cause of his life-
long pains in the region of the bowels might be discovered, and that
the knowledge thus obtained might lead to the invention of a
remedy for like afflictions. Such a wish indeed, on the former point,
as well as afterwards on the latter, he once strongly expressed; but I
believe myself to be speaking equally in his spirit when I say, that all
such considerations of advantage to the public should be
subordinated to the prior claims of private and natural interests. My
own opinion is, that it is the wiser and better plan for persons
connected with those, whose feats of extraordinary strength have
drawn the public gaze upon them, to endure patiently that their
frailties should be gazed and wondered at too; and even if they
think, that any reflection to them of such celebrity, on such
conditions, is far more to be deprecated than desired, still to
consider that they are not permitted to determine their lot, in this
respect, but are to take it as it has been determined for them,
independently of their will, with its peculiar pains and privileges
annexed to it. I believe that most of them would be like the sickly
queen in the fairy tale of Peronella, who repented when she had
obtained the country maiden’s youth and health at the loss of rank
and riches. Be this as it may, they have not a choice of evils, nor can
exchange the aches and pains of their portion, or its wrinkles and
blemishes,—for a fair and painless obscurity. These remarks,
however, refer only to the feeling and conduct of parties privately
affected by such exposures. Others are bound to care for them as
they are not bound to care for themselves. If a finished portrait of
one, in whom they are nearly concerned, is due to the world, they
alone can be the debtors, for the property by inheritance is in them.
Other persons, without their leave, should not undertake to give any
such portrait; their duties move on a different plane; nor can they
rightly feel themselves “entitled” (to borrow the language of Mr. De
Quincey, while I venture to dissent from his judgment), “to notice
the most striking aspects of his character, of his disposition and his
manners, as so many reflex indications of his intellectual
constitution,” if this involves the publication of letters on private
subjects, the relation of domestic circumstances and other such
personalities affecting the living. I am sure at least that conscience
would prohibit me from any such course. I should never think the
public good a sufficient apology for publishing the secret history of
any man or woman whatever, who had connections remaining upon
earth; but if I were possessed of private notices respecting one in
whom the world takes an interest, should think it right to place them
in the hands of his nearest relations, leaving it to them to deal with
such documents, as a sense of what is due to the public, and what
belongs to openness and honesty, may demand.

Of all the censors of Mr. Coleridge, Mr. De Quincey is the one whose
remarks are the most worthy of attention; those of the rest in
general are but views taken from a distance, and filled up by
conjecture, views taken through a medium so thick with opinion,
even if not clouded with vanity and self-love, that it resembles a
horn more than glass or the transpicuous air;—The Opium eater, as
he has called himself, had sufficient inward sympathy with the
subject of his criticism to be capable in some degree of beholding his
mind, as it actually existed, in all the intermingling shades of
individual reality; and in few minds have these shades been more
subtly intermingled than in my Father’s. But Mr. De Quincey’s portrait
of Coleridge is not the man himself; for besides that his knowledge
of what concerned him outwardly was imperfect, the inward
sympathy of which I have spoken was far from entire, and he has
written as if it were greater than it really was. I cannot but
conjecture, from what he has disclosed concerning himself, that on
some points he has seen Mr. Coleridge’s mind too much in the mirror
of his own. His sketches of my Father’s life and character are, like all
that he writes, so finely written, that the blots on the narrative are
the more to be deplored. One of these blots is the passage to which
I referred at the beginning of the last paragraph: “I believe it to be
notorious that he first began the use of opium, not as a relief from
any bodily pains or nervous irritations—for his constitution was
strong and excellent—but as a source of luxurious sensations. It is a
great misfortune, at least it is a great pain, to have tasted the
enchanted cup of youthful rapture incident to the poetic
temperament. Coleridge, to speak in the words of Cervantes, wanted
better bread than was made with wheat.” Mr. De Quincey mistook a
constitution that had vigour in it for a vigorous constitution. His body
was originally full of life, but it was full of death also from the first;
there was in him a slow poison, which gradually leavened the whole
lump, and by which his muscular frame was prematurely slackened
and stupified. Mr. Stuart says that his letters are “one continued flow
of complaint of ill health and incapacity from ill health.” This is true
of all his letters—(all the sets of them)—which have come under my
eye, even those written before he went to Malta, where his opium
habits were confirmed. Indeed it was in search of health that he
visited the Mediterranean,—for one in his condition of nerves a most
ill-advised measure,—I believe that the climate of South Italy is
poison to most persons who suffer from relaxation and tendency to
low fever. If my Father sought more from opium than the mere
absence of pain, I feel assured that it was not luxurious sensations
or the glowing phantasmagoria of passive dreams; but that the
power of the medicine might keep down the agitations of his
nervous system, like a strong hand grasping the jangled strings of
some shattered lyre,—that he might once more lightly flash along
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide,—
released, for a time at least, from the tyranny of ailments, which, by
a spell of wretchedness, fix the thoughts upon themselves,
perpetually drawing them inwards, as into a stifling gulf. A letter[42]
of his has been given in this Supplement, which records his first
experience of opium: he had recourse to it in that instance for
violent pain in the face, afterwards he sought relief in the same way
from the suffering of rheumatism.
I shall conclude this chapter with a poetical sketch drawn from my
Father by a friend, who knew him during the latter years of his life,
after spending a few days with him at Bath, in the year 1815.[43]
Proud lot is his, whose comprehensive soul,
Keen for the parts, capacious for the whole,
Thought’s mingled hues can separate, dark from bright,
Like the fine lens that sifts the solar light;
Then recompose again th’ harmonious rays,
And pour them powerful in collected blaze—
Wakening, where’er they glance, creations new,
In beauty steeped, nor less to nature true;
With eloquence that hurls from reason’s throne
A voice of might, or pleads in pity’s tone:
To agitate, to melt, to win, to soothe,
Yet kindling ever on the side of truth;
Or swerved, by no base interest warped awry,
But erring in his heart’s deep fervency;
Genius for him asserts the unthwarted claim,
With these to mate—the sacred Few of fame—
Explore, like them, new regions for mankind,
And leave, like theirs, a deathless name behind.
CHAPTER XVIII
MRS. COLERIDGE. LAST STAY AT THE LAKE
DISTRICT

[Coleridge married Sarah Fricker, as we have already seen, on 5th


October, 1795. The first period of Coleridge’s married life had been a
happy one. Although there is reason to believe Coleridge married his
wife to “heal a deeper wound,” and that Mary Evans would have
been the object of his choice, there is no reason to suppose that he
ever regretted his union with Sarah Fricker during the first years of
their marriage. All accounts we have of the Clevedon and Stowey
periods agree that Coleridge was happy in the new domestic bond.
Cottle prints a glowing picture of the life at Clevedon
(Reminiscences);[44] and Richard Reynell concurs regarding the
Stowey cottage life (Illustrated London News, 1893). Coleridge, too,
wrote most affectionately to his wife during his absence in Germany
(Letters), and he was a deep lover of his children, and always in
dread lest any calamity should happen to them while he was in
Germany and Malta (Letters). Coleridge, above most men, was
peculiarly fitted to make a good husband. He never spoke of his wife
as his intellectual inferior, although he knew perfectly well she was
not fitted to follow him in his Platonic imaginings. Dorothy
Wordsworth’s remarks (Coleorton Memorials, p. 164) on this point
are beside the mark. Coleridge never expected to find in the woman
he was prepared to love intellectual grasp of his philosophic system.
The woman ideals he has given us are not blue-stockings, but
domestic Ophelias and Imogens. Read in this connection The Eolian
Harp and Lines written on having left a Place of Retirement, Lewti,
Christabel, Love, Fears in Solitude, the Day Dream. “I could,” said
Coleridge to Thomas Allsop in 1822, “have been happy with a
servant-girl had she only in sincerity of heart responded to my
affection.” (Allsop’s Letters of S. T. Coleridge, p. 206.)
Strained relations commenced to develop between the poet and Mrs.
Coleridge between the summer of 1801 and the summer of 1802;
and that Coleridge was not living happily with his wife began to leak
out among their acquaintances during 1802; and by 1807 it had
become a recognized fact. The evidence of all this does not require
to be quoted to those who have read the Journals and Letters of
Dorothy Wordsworth. There are numerous notices of the
estrangement, and Dorothy in a letter to Lady Beaumont (Coleorton
Memorials, i, 162), enumerates what she supposes were the causes
of the gulf of separation.
The causes of the estrangement were cumulative. While Coleridge
never looked upon his wife as his inferior, and never expected
attainments in her which she did not have, Mrs. Coleridge, as she
advanced in years, could not be slow to perceive that there were
other women beside herself who deeply interested themselves in her
husband with his conversational fascinations and gentlemanly
bearing toward woman. She could not be oblivious to the fact that
Dorothy Wordsworth, for instance, was intellectually better fitted
than herself to comprehend the “large discourse” which
characterized Coleridge; and into Dorothy’s ear was poured many a
transcendental disquisition not understandable by the wife. Very few
wives, as we know from the Carlyle history, can allow their husbands
to have a “Gloriana;” and it is not likely that Sarah Fricker was one
of the exceptions. Later, Charlotte Brent became one of Coleridge’s
Platonic sisterhood, but of what intellectual capacity she was of we
cannot tell. But she added to the wife’s resentment. Opium, too, of
course, had its share in irritating the discontented wife.
There is little foundation, as far as I can see, for the charge made
against Mrs. Coleridge in Flagg’s Life of Allston, p. 356, that Mrs.
Coleridge had a horrible and ungovernable temper. I think ill-temper
was created by events and by the non-success of Coleridge, and by
the unfavourable comparison Coleridge as a literary man made with
Southey, who was luckily successful in his ventures while Coleridge
was always unfortunate. She was doubtless sorely tried.
It must also be stated that Coleridge did not neglect his wife in the
pecuniary sense. He allowed Mrs. Coleridge to enjoy the whole of
the Wedgwood Pension (less £20 a year which he granted to her
mother, Mrs. Fricker).[45] In his brief bursts of prosperity he also
remitted her supplementary sums, £110 was sent from Malta, and
£100 more promised. When Remorse was a success he sent her
£100, on 20th January 1813 (Letters, 603), and another £100 was
promised in a month. Coleridge also effected an insurance on his life
for £1,000, with profits, before going to Malta, the premium for
which was £27 5s. 6d. per annum. This was paid to the end of his
life, sometimes, no doubt, by the help of friends; and the policy
realized £2,560. The charge, therefore, that Coleridge neglected or
deserted his wife and family is without foundation. Stuart, in an
article otherwise by no means favourable to Coleridge, acquits him
on this charge. He says Coleridge “never deserted them in the sense
which the words imply. On the contrary, he always spoke of them to
me with esteem, affection, and anxiety. He allowed to them the
greatest part of his income, but that was sometimes insufficient for
their comfortable subsistence, and he himself was usually more
distressed for money than they;” (Gentleman’s Magazine, 1838). We
may add that Coleridge was a man of a vestal purity; and, in spite of
his own experience, never said anything in disparagement of the
marriage bond.
Coleridge paid his last visit to the Lake District in the spring of 1812,
23rd February to 26th March (Letters, 575). He quitted his wife on
cordial enough terms, and wrote an agreeable letter to her from
London (Letters, 579), of date 21st April. But he never returned to
Keswick. That mysterious gulf which he has described so wonderfully
and weirdly in Christabel which separates sundered hearts, widened
with the years; and
They stood aloof, the scars remaining!
CHAPTER XIX
REMORSE AT DRURY LANE[46]

By what I have effected, am I to be judged by my fellow-men;


what I could have done is a question for my own conscience.—S.
T. C.
As the Biographia Literaria does not mention all Mr. Coleridge’s
writings, it will be proper to give some account of them here.
The Poetical Works in three volumes include the Juvenile Poems,
Sibylline Leaves, Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Remorse, Zapolya, and
Wallenstein.
The first volume of Juvenile Poems was published in the Spring of
1796. It contains three sonnets by Charles Lamb, and a poetical
Epistle which he called “Sara’s,” but of which my Mother told me she
wrote but little. Indeed it is not very like some simple affecting
verses, which were wholly by herself, on the death of her beautiful
infant, Berkeley, in 1799. In May, 1797, Mr. C. put forth a collection
of poems, containing all that were in his first edition, with the
exception of twenty pieces and the addition of ten new ones and a
considerable number by his friends, Lloyd and Lamb. The Ancient
Mariner, Love,[47] The Nightingale, The Foster Mother’s Tale first
appeared with the Lyrical Ballads of Mr. Wordsworth in the summer
of 1798. There was a third edition of the Juvenile Poems by
themselves in 1803, with the original motto from Statius, Felix
curarum, etc. Silo. Lib. iv. A spirit of almost child-like sociability
seemed to reign among these young poets—they were fond of joint
publications.
Wallenstein, a Play translated from the German of Schiller, appeared
in 1800. Christabel was not published till April 1816, but written, the
first part at Stowey in 1797, the second at Keswick in 1800. It went
into a third edition in the first year. The fragment called Kubla Khan,
composed in 1797,[48] and the Pains of Sleep, which was annexed to
the former by way of contrast, were published with the first edition
of Christabel, in 1816.
The Tragedy called Remorse was written in the summer and autumn
of 1797, but not represented on the stage till 1813, when it was
performed at Drury Lane—on the authority of an old play-bill of the
Calne Theatre, “with unbounded applause thirty successive nights.”
On “the success of the Remorse,” Mr. Coleridge wrote thus to his
friend Mr. Poole, on the 14th of February, 1813:

Letter 152.
“The receipt of your heart-engendered lines was sweeter than an
unexpected strain of sweetest music;—or in humbler phrase, it was
the only pleasurable sensation which the success of the Remorse has
given me. I have read of, or perhaps only imagined, a punishment in
Arabia, in which the culprit was so bricked up as to be unable to turn
his eyes to the right or to the left, while in front was placed a high
heap of barren sand glittering under the vertical sun. Some slight
analogue of this, I have myself suffered from the mere unusualness
of having my attention forcibly directed to a subject which permitted
neither sequence of imagery, nor series of reasoning. No grocer’s
apprentice, after his first month’s permitted riot, was ever sicker of
figs and raisins than I of hearing about the Remorse. The endless
rat-a-tat-tat at our black-and-blue bruised door, and my three master
fiends, proof sheets, letters (for I have a raging epistolophobia), and
worse than these—invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse
without offence and imputation of pride, nor accept without
disturbance of temper the day before, and a sick aching stomach for
two days after—oppress me so that my spirits quite sink under it.
“I have never seen the Play since the first night. It has been a good
thing for the Theatre. They will get £8,000 or £10,000 by it, and I
shall get more than all my literary labours put together, nay, thrice
as much, subtracting my heavy losses in The Watchman and The
Friend, including the copyright.”[49]
The manuscript of the Remorse, immediately after it was written,
was shown to Mr. Sheridan, “who,” says my Father, in the Preface to
the first Edition, “by a twice conveyed recommendation (in the year
1797) had urged me to write a Tragedy for his theatre, who, on my
objection that I was utterly ignorant of all stage tactics, had
promised that he would himself make the necessary alterations, if
the piece should be at all representable.” He however neither gave
him any answer, nor returned him the manuscript, which he suffered
to wander about the town from his house, and my Father goes on to
say, “not only asserted that the Play was rejected because I would
not submit to the alteration of one ludicrous line, but finally, in the
year 1806, amused and delighted (as who was ever in his society, if
I may trust the universal report, without being amused and
delighted?) a large company at the house of a highly respectable
Member of Parliament, with the ridicule of the Tragedy, as a fair
specimen of the whole of which he adduced a line:
Drip! drip! drip!
There’s nothing here but dripping.
In the original copy of the Play, in the first scene of the fourth act,
Isidore had commenced his soliloquy in the cavern with the words:
Drip! drip! a ceaseless sound of water-drops,—
as far as I can at present recollect: for, on the possible ludicrous
association being pointed out to me, I instantly and thankfully struck
out the line.” I repeat this story as told by Mr. C. himself, because it
has been otherwise told by others. I have little doubt that it was
more pointedly than faithfully told to him, and can never believe that
Mr. S. represented a ludicrous line as a fair specimen of the whole
Play, or his tenacious adherence to it as the reason for its rejection. I
dare say he thought it, as Lord Byron afterwards thought Zapolya,
“beautiful but not practicable.” Mr. Coleridge felt that he had some
claim to a friendly spirit of criticism in that quarter, because he had
“devoted the firstlings of his talents,” as he says in a marginal note,
“to the celebration of Sheridan’s genius,”[50] and after the treatment
described “not only never spoke unkindly or resentfully of it, but
actually was zealous and frequent in defending and praising his
public principles and conduct in the Morning Post”—of which,
perhaps, Mr. S. knew nothing. However, in lighter moods, my Father
laughed at Sheridan’s joke as much as any of his auditors could have
done in 1806, and repeated with great effect and mock solemnity
“Drip!—Drip!—Drip!—nothing but dripping.” I suppose it was at this
time,—the winter of 1806–7—that he made an unsuccessful attempt
to bring out the Tragedy at Drury Lane.[51]
When first written this Play had been called Osorio, from the
principal character, whose name my Father afterwards improved into
Ordonio. I believe he in some degree altered, if he did not absolutely
recast, the three last acts after the failure with Mr. Sheridan, who
probably led him to see their unfitness for theatrical representation.
[52] But of this point I have not certain knowledge. It was when
Drury Lane was under the management of Lord Byron and Mr.
Whitbread, and through the influence of the former, that it was
produced upon the stage. Mr. Gillman says, “Although Mr. Whitbread
did not give it the advantage of a single new scene, yet the
popularity of the Play was such, that the principal actor, (Mr. Roe,)
who had performed in it with great success, made choice of it for his
benefit night, and it brought an overflowing house.” This was some
time after Mr. Coleridge took up his residence at Highgate, in April,
1816. After all I am happy to think that this drama is a strain of
poetry, and like all, not only dramatic poems, but highly poetic
dramas, not to be fully appreciated on the stage.
Zapolya came before the public in 1817. The stage fate of this piece
is alluded to in the B. L. Mr. Gillman mentions that it was Mr. Douglas
Kinnaird, then the critic for Drury Lane, who rejected the Play, and
complained of its “metaphysics”—a term which is not, upon all
occasions, to be strictly construed, but, when used in familiar talk,
seems merely to denote whatever is too fine-spun, in the texture of
thought and speech, for common wear; whatever is not readily
apprehensible and generally acceptable. Schoolboys call everything
in books or discourse, which is graver or tenderer than they like,
“metaphysics.” Mr. Kinnaird may have judged quite rightly that the
Play was too metaphysical for our theatres in their present state,
though certainly plays as metaphysical were once well received on
the stage. Zapolya, however, had a favourable audience from the
public as a dramatic poem. Mr. Gillman says this Christmas Tale,
which the author “never sat down to write, but dictated while
walking up and down the room, became so immediately popular that
2,000 copies were sold in six weeks.”
The collection of poems entitled Sibylline Leaves, “in allusion to the
fragmentary and widely scattered state in which they had been long
suffered to remain,” appeared in 1817, about the same time with
Zapolya, the Biographia Literaria, and the first Lay Sermon.
The Miscellaneous Poems were composed at different periods of the
author’s life, many of them in his later years. I believe that Youth
and Age was written before he left the North of England in 1810,[53]
when he was about seven or eight-and-thirty,—early indeed for the
poet to say of himself
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size:
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes.
The whole of the Poetical Works, with the exception of a few which
must be incorporated in a future edition, are contained in that in
three volumes.[54] The Fall of Robespierre, an Historic drama, of
which the first act was written by Mr. Coleridge, and published
September 22, 1794, is printed in the first vol. of the Lit. Remains.
This first act contains the Song on Domestic Peace. In the blank
verse there are some faint dawnings of his maturer style, as in these
lines:
The winged hours, that scatter’d roses round me,
Languid and sad, drag their slow course along,
And shake big gall-drops from their heavy wings—
and in these:
Why, thou hast been the mouth-piece of all horrors,
And, like a blood-hound, crouch’d for murder! Now
Aloof thou standest from the tottering pillar,
Or, like a frighted child behind its mother,
Hidest thy pale face in the skirts of—Mercy!
but it contains scarcely anything of his peculiar original powers, and
some of the lines are in schoolboy taste; for instance,
While sorrow sad, like the dank willow near her,
Hangs o’er the troubled fountain of her eye.
Yet three years after the date of this composition, in 1797, which has
been called his Annus Mirabilis, he had reached his poetical zenith.
But perhaps it may be said that, from original temperament, and the
excitement of circumstances, my Father lived fast.
He had four poetical epochs, which represented, in some sort,
boyhood, youthful manhood, middle age, and the decline of life. The
first commenced a little on this side childhood, when he wrote Time
real and Imaginary, and ended in 1796. This period embraces the
Juvenile Poems, concluding with Religious Musings, written on the
Christmas Eve of 1794, a few months after The Fall of Robespierre:
The Destiny of Nations was composed a little earlier. Lewti, written in
1795, The Æolian Harp, and Reflections on having left a place of
Retirement, written soon after, are more finished poems, and exhibit
more of his peculiar vein than any which he wrote before them;
though one poet, Mr. Bowles, has said that he never surpassed the
Religious Musings! Fire, Famine, and Slaughter belongs to 1796. The
Lines to a Friend (Charles Lamb) who had declared his intention of
writing no more poetry, and those To a Young Friend (Charles Lloyd)
were composed in the same year. These poems of 1794–5-6 may be
considered intermediate in power as in time, and so forming a link
between the first epoch and the next.[55]
Then came his poetic prime, which commenced with the Ode to the
Departing Year, composed at the end of December, 1796. The year
following, the five-and-twentieth of his life, produced the Ancient
Mariner, Love, and The Dark Ladie, the first part of Christabel, Kubla
Khan, Remorse, in its original cast, France, and This Lime-tree
bower. Fears in Solitude, The Nightingale, and The Wanderings of
Cain, were written in 1798. Frost at Midnight,[56] The Picture,[57] the
Lines to the Rev. G. Coleridge,[58] and those To W. Wordsworth,[59]
are all of this same Stowey period. It was in June, 1797, that my
Father began to be intimate with Mr. Wordsworth, and this doubtless
gave an impulse to his mind. The Hymn before Sunrise,[60] and
other strains produced in Germany, link this period to the next. The
Hexameters written during a temporary blindness, and the Catullian
Hendecasyllables (which are freely translated from Matthisson’s
Milesisches Mährchen) Mr. Cottle seems to place in 1797,[61] but the
Author has marked the former as produced in 1799, and I believe
that the latter are of the same date. The Night Scene, Myrtle leaf
that ill besped,[62] Maiden that with sullen brow, are of this period,
and so I believe are Lines composed in a concert-room, and some
others.
The poems which succeed are distinguished from those of my
Father’s Stowey life by a less buoyant spirit. Poetic fire they have,
but not the clear bright mounting flame of his earlier poetry. Their
meditative vein is graver, and they seem tinged with the sombre
hues of middle age; though some of them were written before the
Author was thirty-five years old. A characteristic poem of this period
is Dejection, an Ode: composed at Keswick, April 4, 1802.
Wallenstein had been written in London in 1800. The Three Graves
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