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•    first, who thought in categories of raaking a success on the labour market, which was connected with the acceptance of distant prospects in thinking about their Professional careers spread over tirae and reąuiring conscious planning and flexible activity;

•    second, who were engaged in the planning process, for whom, however, decision-making competences sufficed most oflen only for the nearest stage and whose next steps in their professional biography oflen mean taking each time only difTerent, short-term decisions,

•    and finally, third, who were characterised by their conscious contestation of the culturally imposed rules of functioning on the market which demands self-reliance and initative, or avoiding responsibility for one’s own life, irresponsible drifling in the cultural context and waiting for what the fate brings - this attitude is characteristic of the earlier stage of development, i.e. childhood.

It might seem that the very demanding reality of the contemporary labour market, characterised by competition, preferring expansiveness, excellent expertise, high ąualifications and professionalism of workers as well as the always looming danger ol unemployment, would force Polish adolescents to assume an attitude which would allou them to manage their own careers, and which follows, to consciously project the prospective, consistent, dynamically changing and flexibly carried out professional path The constructed visions of the futurę must now perform rather a role of gyroscope, which makes it possible to move about in the deep and quick social changes with th< simultaneous possibility of skilful reconstruction of particular elements of plans foi futurę life, depending on extemal circumstances. However, this does not concem a large group of young people from the sample studied, who in their thinking about their futur* careers, focus merely on the next stage, without outlining some strategie lines o development of their later lives or who give up thinking about their futurę live: altogether. Biographical counselling, realised in many difTerent forms, should reach mos efTiciently just these groups of adolescents.