|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| About the Profession of Counseling: | |||||||||||||
| Counseling has long suffered an identity crisis--since the 1940s when Carl R. Rogers first shifted the emphasis of our work from Guidance work to Counseling or psychotherapy. I think the term Guidance implied more "advising and directing" than Rogers thought necessary. And I think he was right to move in this direction. While we will always need advisors, we also need counselors who have an awareness, above all, of the client's right to autonomous decision-making. Thus, Roger's shift in terminology clarified that counselors do not give advice or provide specific direction. Instead,counselors empower others by encouraging, fostering, or facilitating human growth and development. | |||||||||||||
| To paraphrase a well-known saying, counselors don't give clients an answer or solution, we teach them how to find solutions. Many have known of "counseling" as a role or technique used by various professionals. We've seen ads for diet counselors (nutritionists), legal counselors (attorneys), and real estate counselors and realize that many of these individuals have had little or no "counselor" training. They have subject matter expertise and can explain it to others. Social workers (with advanced clinical standing), marriage and family therapists, many psychiatrists and psychologists also offer "counseling" and one usually makes the assumption that these individuals understand not only their subject matter but the process of counseling as well. | |||||||||||||
| Professional counselors have academic training that includes "theories of counseling process" and that training is focused on developing clinical "process" skills over any other expertise. Another basic distinction is that counselors value self-knowledge and self-awareness, an asset in using client transference and managing countertransference. If you need a change agent or practitioner to help you understand interpersonal and intrapersonal experiences, then professional counselors are independent practitioners with the training to provide this assistance. Counselors perform mental health assessment and make diagnoses as an important part of the counseling process. Generally speaking, counselors use formal assessment as it relates to clinical hypothesis formulation and treatment planning. | |||||||||||||
| In sum, counselors have a theory of change and use it to help clients understand how to handle problems in living. They also are skilled in psychotherapy and are able to facilitate change in individuals with serious mental illness, substance use, or personality disorders. Counselors do not solve client problems. Instead we help clients find and define their problems so that they are better able to find their own solutions. In contrast to "depth psychology" or psychoanalysis, counseling is usually short-term, time-limited work, which is a natural match to today's managed care approach to psychotherapy. A counselor's goal is to help the client remain autonomous or become independent as soon as possible. | |||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||