Development of Counseling
Development of Counseling
Development of Counseling
In Roman Catholic theology, pastoral care for the sick and infirm is one of the most
significant ways that members of the Body of Christ continue the ministry and mission of Jesus.
Pastoral care is considered to be the responsibility of all the baptized. Understood in the broad
sense of "helping others," pastoral care is the responsibility of all Christians. Sacramental
pastoral care is the administration of the sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance,
Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, Matrimony) that is reserved to consecrated priests, except for
Baptism (in an emergency anyone can baptize) and marriage, where the spouses are the ministers
and the priest is the witness. Pastoral care was understood differently at different times in history.
A significant development occurred after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (more on this in the
link to Father Boyle's lecture below). The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) applied the word
"pastoral" to a variety of situations involving care of souls; on this point, go to the link to
Monsignor Gherardini's lecture).
Many Catholic parishes employ "pastoral associates", lay people who serve in ministerial or
administrative roles, assisting the pastor in his work, but who are not ordained clerics. They are
responsible, among other things, for the spiritual care of frail and housebound as well as for
running a multitude of tasks associated with the sacramental life of the Church. However, these
tasks are also—and primarily—a part of the role of the ordained clergy, especially
the deacons and priests assigned to the parish, who are entrusted with administering most of the
Sacraments. If priests have the necessary qualifications in counseling or in psychotherapy, they
may offer professional psychological services when they give pastoral counseling as part of their
pastoral care of souls. However, the Church hierarchy under John Paul II and Benedict XVI has
emphasized that the Sacrament of Penance, or Reconciliation, is for the forgiveness of sins and
not counseling and as such should not be confused with or incorporated into the therapy given to
a person by a priest, even if the therapist priest is also their confessor. The two processes, both of
which are privileged and confidential under civil and canon law, are separate by nature.
Youth workers and youth ministers are also finding a place within parishes, and this involves
their spirituality. It is common for Youth workers/ministers to be involved in pastoral care and
are required to have a qualification in counseling before entering into this arm of ministry.
The empirical philosophy of Aristotle became the basis for the modern scientific
method. Modern science has been very successful at solving the practical, material problems of
existence.
Frank Parsons, often called the founder of guidance, focused his work on growth and
prevention. His influence was great in his time and it is “Parson’s body of work and his efforts to
help others [that] lie at the center of the wheel that represents present day counseling” (Ginter,
2002, p. 221). Parsons had a colorful life career in multiple disciplines, being a lawyer, an
engineer, a college teacher, and a social worker before ultimately becoming a social reformer and
working with youth (Hartung & Blustein, 2002; Pope & Sweinsdottir, 2005; Sweeney, 2001). He
has been characterized as a broad scholar, a persuasive writer, a tireless activist, and a great
intellect (Davis, 1988; Zytowski, 1985). However, he is best known for founding Boston’s
Vocational Bureau in 1908, a major step in the institutionalization of vocational guidance.
At the Bureau, Parsons worked with young people who were in the process of making
career decisions. He “envisioned a practice of vocational guidance based on rationality and
reason with service, concern for others, cooperation, and social justice among its core values”
(Hartung & Blustein, 2002, p. 41). He theorized that choosing a vocation was a matter of relating
three factors: a knowledge of work, a knowledge of self, and a matching of the two through “true
reasoning.” Thus, Parsons devised a number of procedures to help his clients learn more
about themselves and the world of work. One of his devices was an extensive
questionnaire that asked about experiences (“How did you spend each evening last week?”),
preferences (“At a World’s Fair, what would you want to see first? second? third?”), and morals
(“When have you sacrificed advantage for the right?”) (Gummere, 1988, p. 404).
Parsons’s book Choosing a Vocation (1909), published one year after his death, was quite
influential, especially in Boston. For example, the superintendent of Boston schools, Stratton
Brooks, designated 117 elementary and secondary teachers as vocational counselors. The
“Boston example” soon spread to other major cities as school personnel recognized the need for
vocational planning. By 1910, 35 cities were emulating Boston (Lee, 1966).
Clifford Beers, a former Yale student, was hospitalized for depression several times
during his life (Kiselica & Robinson, 2001). He found conditions in mental institutions
deplorable and exposed them in his book, A Mind That Found Itself (1908), which became a
popular best seller. Beers used the book as a platform to advocate for better mental health
facilities and reform in the treatment of people with mental illness by making friends with and
soliciting funds from influential people of his day, such as the Fords and Rockefellers. His work
had an especially powerful influence on the fields of psychiatry and psychology. “Many people
in these fields referred to what they were doing as counseling,” which was seen “as a means of
helping people adjust to themselves and society” (Hansen, Rossberg, & Cramer, 1994, p. 5).
Beers’s work was the impetus for the mental health movement in the United States, as well as
advocacy groups that exist today including the National Mental Health Association and the
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. His work was also a forerunner of mental health
counseling.
World War I was the third important event of the decade. During the war “counseling
became more widely recognized as the military began to employ testing and placement practices
for great numbers of military personnel” (Hollis, 2000, p. 45). In this process, the Army
commissioned the development of numerous psychological instruments, among them the Army
Alpha and Army Beta intelligence tests. Several of the Army’s screening devices were
employed in civilian populations after the war, and psychometrics (psychological testing)
became a popular movement and an early foundation on which counseling was based.
Lewis Terman believed that intelligence was inherited and was the strongest predictor of
one's ultimate success in life. He had a vision ofAmerican society as a meritocracy—a social
order based on individual ability or achievement, rather than social status. He thus
sawintelligence tests as the means to identify the potential leaders of society. Terman started his
work on intelligence with his doctoral dissertation, entitled Genius and Stupidity: A Study of the
Intellectual Processes of Seven "Bright" and Seven "Stupid" Boys. He designed a series of mental
tests to distinguish the bright students from the less intelligent ones. He administered English
tests to Spanish-speakers and non-schooled African-Americans, concluding:
High-grade or border-line deficiency … is very, very common among Spanish-Indian and
Mexican families of the Southwest and also among negroes. Their dullness seems to be
racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come. … Children of this
group should be segregated into separate classes. … They cannot master abstractions but
they can often be made into efficient workers … from a eugenic point of view they
constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding (Terman, 1916, p.
91-92).
In 1905, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon published their Binet-Simon Intelligence
Scale, in which Terman took great interest. He redesigned the scale, removing several of the
original items and adding completely new ones. He also incorporated
the Germanpsychologist William Stern's proposal that an individual's intelligence level be
measured as an Intelligence Quotient (IQ). The IQ was calculated by dividing the subject’s
mental age (obtained from the test) by chronological age and then multiplying by 100. Terman
published his Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale, or simply
the Stanford-Binet Scale, in his famousThe Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and
a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon
Intelligence Scale (1916).
Terman also helped adopt his test for the use in the military during World War I. The test was
used as the Army Alpha and Army Betatests, which helped classify recruits. This enabled
effective and fast classification of new staff, as the test could be quickly administered to large
numbers of people. After the war, Terman applied the same method in classification to school-
children. He developed theNational Intelligence Tests for grades three to eight. Unlike Binet and
Simon, whose goal was to identify less able school children in order to aid them with the needed
care required, Terman proposed using IQ tests to classify children and put them on the
appropriate job-track. During the 1920s, Terman’s group intelligence tests were used to classify
children into homogeneous ability groups, what came to be known as the “tracking system.”
In the 1920s, Terman initiated several longitudinal studies of gifted children that were continued
long after his death. He gathered a group of 1,500 California children whose IQs were over 140,
and studied them over several decades. The children included in his studies were colloquially
referred to as "Termites." Terman carefully recorded all their major milestones in life, from their
childhood to deep into the adulthood. After Terman’s death other scientists continued to follow
up on the study. One of the most important results of the study was that Terman found that gifted
children did not fit the existing stereotypes often associated with them: They were not weak and
sickly social misfits, but in fact were generally taller, in better health, better developed
physically, and better adapted socially than other children.
Terman’s other, lesser known work consisted of development of scales that measured masculinity
and femininity and the degree of marital happiness.
Three major events in the 1940s radically shaped the practice of counseling: the theory of
Carl Rogers, World War II, and government’s involvement in counseling after the war. Carl
Rogers rose to prominence in 1942 with the publication of his book Counseling and
Psychotherapy, which challenged the counselor-centered approach of Williamson as well as
major tenets of Freudian psychoanalysis. Rogers emphasized the importance of the client,
espousing a nondirective approach to counseling. His ideas were both widely accepted and
harshly criticized. Rogers advocated giving clients responsibility for their own growth. He
thought that if clients had an opportunity to be accepted and listened to, then they would begin to
know themselves better and become more congruent (genuine). He described the role of the
professional helper as being nonjudgmental and accepting. Thus, the helper served as a mirror,
reflecting the verbal and emotional manifestations of the client. Aubrey (1977, p. 292) has noted
that, before Rogers, the literature in guidance and counseling was quite practical, dealing with
testing, cumulative records, orientation procedures, vocations, and placement functions. In
addition, this early literature dealt extensively with the goals and purpose of guidance. With
Rogers, there was a new emphasis on the importance of the relationship in counseling, research,
refinement of counseling technique, selection and training of future counselors, and the goals and
objectives of counseling. Guidance, for all intents and purposes, suddenly disappeared as a major
consideration in the bulk of the literature and was replaced by a decade or more of concentration
on counseling. The Rogers revolution had a major impact on both counseling and psychology.
Not only did Rogers’s ideas come to the forefront, but a considerable number of alternative
systems of psychotherapy emerged as well (Corsini, 2008).
The Chartering of the American School Counselor Association (ASCA). In 1953, the
American School Counselor Association was chartered. It joined APGA as its fifth member
shortly thereafter. By joining APGA, ASCA strengthened the association numerically,
pragmatically, and philosophically. Division 17. In 1952, the Society of Counseling Psychology
(Division 17) of APA was formally established. It was initially known as the Division of
Counseling Psychology. Its formation required dropping the term “guidance” from what had
formerly been the association’s Counseling and Guidance Division. Part of the impetus for the
division’s creation came from the VA, but the main impetus came from APA members interested
in working with a more “normal” population than the one seen by clinical psychologists
(Whiteley, 1984). Once created, Division 17 became more fully defined. Super (1955), for
instance, distinguished between counseling psychology and clinical psychology, holding that
counseling psychology was more concerned with normal human growth and development and
was influenced in its approach by both vocational counseling and humanistic psychotherapy.
Despite Super’s work, counseling psychology had a difficult time establishing a clear identity
within the APA (Whiteley, 1984). Yet the division’s existence has had a major impact on the
growth and development of counseling as a profession. In fact, luminaries in the counseling
profession such as Gilbert Wrenn and Donald Super held offices in both Division 17 and in
APGA divisions for years and published in the periodicals of both.
The move toward standardized training and certification was one that began early in the
decade and grew stronger yearly. In 1981, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and
Related Educational Programs (CACREP) was formed as an affiliate organization of APGA.
It refined the standards first proposed by ACES in the late 1970s and initially accredited four
programs and recognized others that had been accredited by the California state counselor
association and ACES (Steinhauser & Bradley, 1983). In 1987, CACREP achieved membership
in the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation (COPA), bringing it “into a position of
accreditation power parallel to” such specialty accreditation bodies as the APA (Herr, 1985, p.
399). CACREP standardized counselor education programs for master’s and doctoral programs
in the areas of school, community, mental health, and marriage and family counseling, as well as
for personnel services for college students. Complementary to the work of CACREP, the
National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), which was formed in 1982, began to certify
counselors on a national level. It developed a standardized test and defined eight major subject
areas in which counselors should be knowledgeable: (a) human growth and development, (b)
social and cultural foundations, (c) helping relationships, (d) groups, (e) lifestyle and career
development, (f) appraisal, (g) research and evaluation, and (h) professional orientation. To
become a National Certified Counselor (NCC), examinees have to pass a standardized test and
meet experiential and character reference qualifications. By the end of the decade, there were
approximately 17,000 NCC professionals. Finally, in collaboration with CACREP, the National
Academy of Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselors (NACCMHC), an affiliate of the
AMHCA, continued to define training standards and certify counselors in mental health
counseling, a process it had begun in the late 1970s (Seiler, Brooks, & Beck, 1987; Wilmarth,
1985). It also began training supervisors of mental health counselors in 1988. Both programs
attracted thousands of new professionals into counseling and upgraded the credentials of those
already in the field.
The 1990s continued to see changes in the evolution of the counseling profession, some
of them symbolic and others structural. One change that was significant was the 1992 decision
by the AACD to modify its name and become the American Counseling Association (ACA).
The new name better reflected the membership and mission of the organization. A second
noteworthy event in the 1990s also occurred in 1992, when counseling, as a primary mental
health profession, was included for the first time in the health care human resource statistics
compiled by the Center for Mental Health Services and the National Institute of Mental Health
(Manderscheid & Sonnenschein, 1992). This type of recognition put counseling on par with other
mental health specialties such as psychology, social work, and psychiatry. By the beginning of
the 21st century, it was estimated that there were approximately 100,000 counselors in the United
States (Wedding, 2008). A third event in counseling that also originated in 1992 was the writing
of the multicultural counseling competencies and standards by Sue, Arredondo, and McDavis
(1992). Although these competencies mainly applied to counseling with people of color, they set
the stage for a larger debate about the nature of multicultural counseling—for instance, the
inclusion within the definition of other groups, such as people with disabilities. Thus, a lively
discussion occurred during the decade about what diversity and counseling within a pluralistic
society entailed (Weinrach & Thomas, 1998). A fourth issue in the 1990s was a focus on health
care and an increase in managed health care organizations. Conglomerates emerged, and many
counselors became providers under these new organized ways of providing services. As a result,
the number of independent counselor practitioners decreased as did the number of sessions a
counselor could offer under managed health care plans. A new emphasis on legislation connected
with these organizations forced counselors to become increasingly informed and active as
legislative proponents (Barstow, 1998). In addition, there was a renewed focus within the decade
on counseling issues related to the whole person. Counselors became more aware of social
factors important to the development and maintenance of mental disorders and health including
the importance of organism-context interaction (i.e., contextualism) (Thomas, 1996). These
factors include spirituality, family environment, socioeconomic considerations, the impact of
groups and group work, and prevention (Bemak, 1998). Other developments in the 1990s
included the following: • The merger of the National Academy of Clinical Mental Health
Counselors with NBCC to credential counselors. • The growth of CACREP-accredited programs
in counselor education on both the doctoral and master’s levels. • An increase in the number of
publications on counseling by ACA, commercial publishers, and ERIC/CASS (Counseling and
Student Services Clearinghouse). • The growth of Chi Sigma Iota to over 200 chapters and
20,000 members. • Growth of state counselor licensure laws.