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Toward a Developmental Understanding of the Counseling Specialty: Lessons From our Students
Author(s) -
STEENBARGER BRETT N.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of counseling and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.805
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1556-6676
pISSN - 0748-9633
DOI - 10.1002/j.1556-6676.1990.tb02524.x
Subject(s) - specialty , metatheory , remedial education , value (mathematics) , psychology , psychological intervention , distress , engineering ethics , medical education , psychotherapist , medicine , epistemology , mathematics education , computer science , philosophy , machine learning , psychiatry , engineering
Trends in professional practice and training have led to a debate concerning the need for an increasing remedial emphasis within the counseling field. Proposals for an integration of the counseling and clinical specialties have been opposed by those arguing that a specialty differentiation captures meaningful differences. This article hypothesizes that the counseling specialty is distinguished by its reliance on a developmental metatheory, which makes unique assumptions regarding distress, change, and the helping process. This metatheory is rooted in a rich theoretical and empirical tradition and has generated innovations in practice that transcend usual remedial forms of helping. It is proposed that the value of developmentalism and the counseling specialty are most evident in the developmental interventions of college counseling.