Populations served by counseling psychologists include persons of all ages and cultural backgrounds. Examples of those populations would include late adolescents or adults with career/educational concerns and children or adults facing severe personal difficulties. Counseling psychologists also consult with organizations seeking to enhance their effectiveness or the well-being of their members.

Counseling Psychologists adhere to the standards and ethics established by the American Psychological Association.

Counseling psychologists participate in a range of activities including teaching, research, psychotherapeutic and counseling practice, career development, assessment, supervision, and consultation. They employ a variety of methods closely tied to theory and research to help individuals, groups and organizations function optimally as well as to mediate dysfunction. Interventions may be either brief or long-term; they are often problem-specific and goal-directed. These activities are guided by a philosophy that values individual differences and diversity and a focus on prevention, development, and adjustment across the life-span which includes vocational concerns.

Counseling psychologists are employed in a variety of settings depending on the services they provide and the client populations they serve. Some are employed in colleges and universities as teachers, supervisors, researchers, and service providers. Others are employed in independent practice providing counseling, psychotherapy, assessment, and consultation services to individuals, families, groups, and organizations. Additional settings in which counseling psychologists practice include community mental health centers, Veterans Administration Medical Centers and other facilities, family services, health maintenance organizations, rehabilitation agencies, business and industrial organizations and consulting firms.

One focus of the annual survey that the Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs (CCPTP) conducts with its member training programs is on jobs new graduates have taken. Those survey results are instructive to prospective students who can review them at the CCPTP website (http://www.lehigh.edu/ccptp/).

Counseling psychologists are trained at the doctoral level (usually PhD, but also Psy.D. or Ed.D.) in programs that typically require at least four to five years of graduate study, involving coursework and integrated training experiences in a variety of topical areas and professional skills. These include (a) instruction in the core areas of psychology (biological, cognitive/affective, and social bases of behavior; individual differences; history and systems of psychology); (b) specialized instruction in theories of counseling and personality, vocational psychology, human life span development, psychological assessment and evaluation, psychopathology, measurement and statistics, research design, professional ethics, supervision, and consultation; (c) supervised practica focused on the development of counseling, psychotherapy, assessment, and consultation skills; (d) the equivalent of a one year full-time predoctoral internship in professional psychology; and (e) completion of an original psychologically-based dissertation. Murdock, Alcorn, Heesacker & Stoltenberg’s (1998) description of the "model" or normative counseling psychology program is an invaluable resource for prospective students.

Counseling psychology programs usually are housed in departments of psychology or in colleges of education and most are accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA). The APA accords accreditation to doctoral programs in counseling psychology that meet certain criteria with respect to faculty, curriculum, facilities, and other considerations.

The list of accredited programs is printed annually in the December issue of the journal, the American Psychologist, and also is posted on-line at www.apa.org/ed/doctoral.html. More detailed information about both accredited and non-accredited training programs is provided in the book, Graduate Study in Psychology, which is available from the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/books/4270086.html). Also, many programs now have their own web pages. You may also review Dr. Stilwell's page at the University of Kentucky for additional links to counseling psychology related sites (www.uky.edu/Education/EDP/psyprog.html).

Entrance to doctoral programs in counseling psychology is competitive and selective, for there are far more applicants to the programs than can be admitted. Recent data from the APA indicate that the typical counseling psychology program admits one in ten of the applications it receives. Factors important in the selection process include a bachelor’s (and possibly master’s) degree earned from an accredited college or university, consistently high college grades, and coursework and/or volunteer or work experience that matches the orientation of the particular doctoral program to which one is applying. Scores on standardized scholastic aptitude tests such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) usually are considered as well.

Those interested in learning more about the specialty of counseling psychology are encouraged to consult the following resources that should be readily available in most university libraries:

1. The Counseling Psychologist: this journal of the Division of Counseling Psychology routinely publishes articles related to counseling psychology identity, theory, and practice.

2. Journal of Counseling Psychology: this journal of the American Psychological Association gives particular attention to publishing results of empirical studies about counseling processes and outcomes, theoretical articles about counseling, and studies dealing with the evaluation of applications of counseling and counseling programs.

3. Several discrete sources include:

a. Archival description of counseling psychology (APA, 1999): This is the most current official description of the specialty of counseling psychology.

b. During its half-century history, three national conferences on counseling psychology have been held.  From each conference has come a published a statement concerning the nature and definition of counseling psychology.  The most recent report is that by Gazda, Rude, & Weissberg (1988). 

c. The book Counseling Psychology by Gelso and Fretz (1992) provides excellent, thorough coverage of the specialty.

The American Psychological Association’s website (http://www.apa.org/) also is a good resource for current and prospective psychology students. Those in interested in counseling psychology-specific links, though, should find the following to be important sources of information.

References

American Psychological Association. (1999). Archival description of Counseling Psychology. The Counseling Psychologist, 27, 589-592

Gelso, C. J., Fretz, B. R. (1992). Counseling psychology. Ft Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.:

Gazda, G. M., Rude, S. S., & Weissberg, M. (Eds.). (1988). The third national conference for counseling psychology: Planning the future. Counseling Psychologist, 16, 323 - 439.

Murdock, N. L., Alcorn, J., Heesacker, M., & Stoltenberg, C. (1998). Model training program in counseling psychology. The Counseling Psychologist, 26, 658-672.