Aaron Norton, “a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Adjunct Instructor for the Department of Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling at the University of South Florida's College of Behavioral and Community Sciences provided a 1-hour overview of the history of professional counseling for his student and did it absorbing” (Norton, 2014). In our essay, we will go through the main points of the timeline of the professional counseling development.
The period 1760 – 1840 was known as an Industrial Revolution. While that time people needed to increase the productivity, harvesting and manufacturing. The country called for the professionals and improving the working conditions for them. People started to come from rural areas for a better life, and, even children worked at the plants and factories in the poor conditions.
Living in such harsh conditions physically healthy people also needed to receive the helping hand from the professional psychologists. However, before 1900 there was no any formal counseling, although the country needed it a lot. The professional world recognizes Frank Parsons as the ‘Father of Counselling,' who founded such a vocational education in Boston in 1908 as well as published ‘Choosing a Vocation’ in 1908. Parson considered the professional counseling as the knowledge of how the world works, the achievement in educational sphere and the balance between labor and “person values, personal attributes, aspirations, and interests” (“History of the Counseling Profession,” 2003). The early counseling activities involved a vocational development profession, linking workers from rural areas with new manufacturing jobs in the cities and emphasizing connecting education with work.
The personal aspect of life always was crucial. The increased productivity enlarged the number of population. The life capacity became bigger, so people needed to learn how to live happier providing the longer duration of the possible years of wellbeing. In 1920s Abraham and Sarra Stone founded their 1st marriage and counseling center in New York City (Norton, 2014).
We also need to mention the pioneers of the school counseling with their vocational theories of the 1930s and 1940s such as Charles Axelrod, Anne Roe, and Donald Super. Their input, as well as the writings of Carl Rogers “Humanism”, C. Gilbert Wrenn in 1950s, led to the National Defense Education Act in 1950s that called for professionals to promote training in the sciences and provide funding for training school counselors (Norton, 2014). Former ‘deans’ were first counselors as well as the old ‘dean’s offices’ became the first early guidance departments. The main activities were academic and career development rather than personal counseling or development. Very often counselors maintained the disciplinary roles.
In 1964 the were the initiatives for elementary counseling training funding under National Defense Education Act, and as a result, in mid-1970s middle/junior high school counselors emerged in an enormous amount. In 1980 there was the start of the alternative school counselors educating under successive Carl Perkins grants in the 80s and the 90s (“History of the Counseling Profession”, 2003).
In 2002 counseling profession formally celebrated its 50th anniversary as a business under the umbrella of American Counseling Association.
Nowadays, American Counseling Association accounts for more than 52,000 members, 13 national divisions and partner organizations. The first organization was National Vocational Guidance Association founded in 1913. There are lots of journals, in particular, Journal of Counseling and Development, which published its first bulletin in 1915, and websites, for instance, www.counseling.org (Norton, 2014).
References
History of the Counseling Profession. (n.d.). Retrieved June 29, 2016, from <http://www.iupui.edu/~flip/overviewpp/index.htm>
Norton, A. (2014, Aug. 29 ). In Historical Overview of Professional Counseling. Retrieved Jun. 29, 2016, from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EWR_TYTm2Y>
