Transition: from vocational guidance to counseling psychology.
In 1951, rather suddenly but not unexpectedly, a new psychological job title came into use in the United States, and a hitherto somewhat amorphous and debatable field of psychology emerged as clearly a field in its own right. The job was that of counseling psychologist, the field was that of counseling psychology. These terms were adopted at a meeting which took place at Northwestern University immediately prior to the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in September, 1951, at a special conference called by C. Gilbert Wrenn of the University of Minnesota, president of what was then called the Division of Counseling and Guidance of the American Psychological Association. The conference was attended by some sixty leading psychologists interested in vocational guidance and in counseling. The way had been paved for this conference by a Committee on Counselor Training headed by Francis P. Robinson of the Ohio State University, and two co-ordinate subcommittees, one on Doctoral Training Programs headed by Edward S. Bordin of the University of Michigan and one on the Practicum Training of Counseling Psychologists chaired by the present writer. The work of these committees and of the Northwestern Conference, published in the June, 1952, issue of the American Psychologist (3, 4), crystallized current thinking and standardized terminology, giving birth to the term counseling psychology and creating an awareness among psychologists of some of the important differences between this and the related fields of applied psychology. It may be of general interest to outline the origins of this new development.