Counseling Psychology

Abstract

Abstract Counseling psychology is a relatively recent phenomenon. The original counseling psychologists were largely social reformers intent on improving the lives of immigrants and children through more thoughtful vocational and career planning. With an emphasis on individual differences, the vocational guidance movement was greeted with interest by applied psychologists, just coming into their own early in the twentieth century. Finding its way in to the university setting, vocational guidance provided laboratories for the development of materials and methods, and provided training for student's training in the field of clinical psychology. With applications in the military, industry, and education, counseling and guidance benefited from significant federal funding after World War II. The federal government's need for and support of mental health professionals, led counseling psychology further from its roots in vocational guidance and closer to its current identity as a health service profession. Today counseling psychology is a recognized area of professional practice in psychology with well‐established graduate training programs, two successful journals, and the American Psychological Association's 10th largest division, Division 17, Counseling Psychology.