If you clicked on this article, chances are you are considering a profession in counseling and at the very least, you are curious about the topic. If you choose a counseling career, you'll join a profession that is now the life's work of more than 200,000 Americans. Counseling is sought for a variety of reasons— to help them through a particularly hard/stressful time in their life, decisions about school, jobs, family, etc.
For thousands of years, the counselors’ role was filled by clergy, elders, and kinfolk, but a new profession has developed and claimed a significant expertise. Psychology matured as a science and we've witnessed the specialization of all professions. Counselors found new niches in education, mental health, rehabilitation, and family therapy, to name a few. While some of the counseling specialties are developmental—helping people reach their full potential in today's vibrant society—others are concerned with the harmful side effects of modern life—stress, violence, and broken relationships.
Counselors work quietly to help people find a direction in their lives, perhaps through education or a career choice. They help restore a sense of order and purpose to troubled people's lives. Counselors care about people. They seek methods or processes to help them. Within a trusting relationship, they search for ways to show clients how to deal with challenges.
All states recognize counseling as a profession and provide for professional certification—similar to lawyers' bar exams or physicians' credentialing requirements. Universities train counselors with advanced degree programs in their specialties.
Many counselors work in schools. Others work in private practices by themselves or with a few colleagues. But while work settings vary, the basic skills are similar. Counselors combine careful listening skills with the ability to give practical and appropriate responses to problematic situations. At their best, counselors act as a trusted friend, carefully listening and tendering reasoned advice.
Counselors of the 90’s and the 21st century face some new challenges, as a special issue of the Journal of Counseling and Development, November/December, 1995, chronicled in a roundup of commentary from experts gathered by editors Jane Myers and Dr. Edwin Herr in all counseling specialties. Among their findings:
- Career counselors are challenged by the global shifts of economies, by the change from a world of factory work to a world of offices and "knowledge work." They'll have to help their clients find a career path in this new world of work.
- School counselors will need to help pupils from the all kinds of families that make up America, not just traditional working families, but single-parent families, low-income families, immigrant families, and minorities.
- College counselors will need to be able to help students in new ways—career choice, the adjustment to life in a diverse/new campus community, and health issues like AIDS, substance abuse, etc.
- Family counselors working in the United States find themselves in a society with about a 50% divorce rate, stepfamilies involving one-third of all children born in the past decade, and high levels of domestic abuse and violence.
- Rehabilitation counselors, whose profession emerged to serve workers' compensation needs and the 600,000 injured veterans of World War II, now turn to additional tasks with clients who have varying kinds of challenges, not just physical disabilities but developmental, and also addictive personalities.
- Mental health counselors are studying better ways to diagnose patients and are trying to offer preventive care; they seek mental health services that are recognized as necessary on par with medical services, and paid for by appropriate private and public insurers.
- New counseling specialties will grow to meet current needs: addictions counselors to help the estimated 4 - 20% of Americans who are addicted to alcohol or drugs; gerontological counselors will be needed to help the growing ranks of the aged (by 2050, half of the population will be over 50, with many more senior citizens than at present) with their special needs.
In a pioneering book on counseling first published in the 30s, Rollo May asked the question:
“What makes a good counselor?”
A: "The superficial qualities of the good counselor are self-evident…the ability to be at ease in other people's company, a capacity to empathize, and other characteristics ...these qualities... can be acquired to a great extent to penetrate more deeply into the problem.”
“What differentiates a good counselor from a poor one?”
A: The quality that is essential is “inherent insight into the human soul—first of all into the unconscious layers of his own soul-and practical training.” This “practical training” means the ability to escape from the tendency to counsel on the basis of one's own more or less rigid prejudices," Freud stated. This practical training for men and women who choose counseling for a career has many good graduate-level programs to choose from. These programs combine classroom learning with internships and practical experience under supervision. The insight that comes with experience and through self-analysis or therapy in the course of education and the early work years are considered vital to how counselors develop their abilities.
“What is the right level of service to the public through counseling?”
A: That is a question answered through market forces and legislation by state and federal governments. In some specialties, growth will be greater than average. However, many counselors who enter the profession later, move on to teaching or other careers, and their field will continue to change and evolve so new counselors are always needed.
With so many subspecialties that have developed, counseling as an occupation is not easily defined.
Image Source: Freepik.com
