1800s & Early 1900s
He is known as the “Father of Vocational Guidance” and wrote Choosing a Vocation (1909)
Frank Parsons
This war led to using psychological tests to screen large numbers of military personnel
World War I
This professional association, founded in 1952, later became the American Counseling Association (ACA)
American Personnel and Guidance Association (APGA)
This 1963 act funded mental health centers nationwide, providing outpatient, inpatient, and emergency services at low or no cost
Community Mental Health Centers Act
These two organizations, established in the early 1980s, helped standardize counselor training and credentials; one accredits counseling programs, and the other administers the national certification exam for counselors
CACREP (Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs)
National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC)
This social reformer founded the Vocational Bureau in Boston in 1908 to help immigrants find work.
Frank Parsons
Developed the first comprehensive counseling theory, known as the Minnesota point of view
E.G. Williamson
The Soviet launch of Sputnik led to this 1958 law funding counselor training and school counseling programs
National Defense Education Act (NDEA)
Name two key legislative initiatives of the 1960s that helped reshape attitudes toward social problems
Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Economic Opportunity Act
Counselor training increasingly emphasizes this area, which includes telemental health, disaster response, and trauma-informed care
crisis, trauma, and disaster counseling
Who is Eli Weaver?
New York vocational guidance pioneer
Wrote Choosing a Career in the early 1900s
This 1948 federal law increased funding for mental health training and programs
National Mental Health Act
This 1952 publication marked the start of modern classification of mental disorders
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I)
The emergence of professional counseling ethics in the 1960s laid the groundwork for later standards, including accreditation and national credentialing. This 1961 milestone established formal expectations for the counseling profession
APGA (American Personnel and Guidance Association) ethical codes
Name the “Fourth and Fifth Forces” in counseling that emerged during this period
multicultural counseling and social justice counseling
This school superintendent in Grand Rapids, MI, incorporated vocational guidance into the high school curriculum in 1907
Jesse Davis
This organization, created after Frank Parsons’ death, was the first national association for vocational guidance and later became part of the ACA
National Vocational Guidance Association (NVGA)
Client-Centered Therapy
Carl Rogers’ approach, originallycalled nondirective counseling, emphasized that clients—not therapists—are the experts on their own lives.
Counseling became increasingly diversified during this period. Name two counseling approaches that emerged or grew significantly in the 1960s & 1970s
Behavioral (Bandura), rational emotive (Ellis), existential (Frankl), Gestalt (Perls), or reality therapy (Glasser)?
This vision emerged from counseling-related professional groups, emphasizing a shared definition of counseling and goals for the profession
20/20 Vision for the Future of Counseling
Industrialization, immigration, and the expansion of public education all fueled the emergence of this early 20th-century movement
vocational guidance movement
The rise of Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s led to an influx of European psychologists and philosophers to the U.S., which helped shift counseling toward this orientation
humanistic/existential counseling
The discovery of antipsychotic, antidepressant, and antianxiety medications in the 1950s, along with controversial use of this treatment, allowed many patients to leave state hospitals and receive services at these local settings
electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and community mental health agencies
By the 1970s, counselor training included “microcounseling skills” based on the humanistic approach, teaching core skills like attending, listening, and this key counseling technique
empathic understanding
With all 50 states offering counselor licensure, this issue, critical for counselors moving between states, is being explored to create more uniform standards nationwide
licensure portability