TPC Journal-V6, Issue 4- FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor /Volume 6, Issue 4 298 Providing examples of counselor incompetence to legislators was a painful but necessary task that was required to convince state lawmakers that regulation of the counseling profession was needed to protect the public. In order to get counselor licensure bills passed, we also argued that counseling was a unique profession that was distinct and different from psychology and other helping professions. In Virginia, after the counselor licensure law was passed and implemented, we went back to the state legislature to argue that counseling was quite similar to the profession of psychology in that counselors had the proper training to diagnose and treat mental disorders, in order to be qualified to receive third party insurance company payments for services. Interestingly, legislative processes and politics often require compromise and even making seemingly contradictory arguments from time to time. When state counselor licensure bills were being considered, psychologists, supported financially by the American Psychological Association (APA) and state psychological associations, argued before state legislators that counselors did not have adequate education to provide counseling services. Social workers essentially agreed with psychologists. Of course it was to the advantage of psychologists and social workers to keep counselors out of the job market so that counselors could not compete for professional positions and clients in private practices. But psychologists and social workers were not the only groups who opposed counselor licensure— some counselors opposed it as well. Counselors who did not meet the minimum requirements state licensure bills established to become licensed argued that counselor licensure would take away their ability to practice in their respective states. As a result, almost all states grandfathered in the counselors who were already practicing, whether or not they met the minimum licensure requirements. While many counselors at the time were distressed that unqualified counselors were allowed to be licensed, this was one of the many compromises that had to be reached in order for counselor licensure bills to be passed. Other compromises included the number of credits required for a counseling master’s degree (which ranged from 30 to more than 60), the required post-degree supervised experience (which ranged from none to 3 years), and the type of exam required (which varied from state to state). The result of such compromises was counselor licensure laws varying widely from one state to another. The differences in state counselor licensure laws is currently having an adverse effect on counselors who move from one state to another and also confuses the public because of the lack of standardization regarding the requirements for practicing the profession of counseling. It would be possible to rewrite state statutes to align with one another, but that would need to be accomplished state by state over time. 3. What do you consider to be your major contribution to the development of the counseling profession and why? While I was Executive Director of the American Counseling Association (between the years 1990 and 1994), I wrote a column in the ACA newsletter called Guidepost, in which I listed the elements of professional counselor identity. That column has been quoted often and the statements of professional counselor identity being published today look very similar to what I wrote about more than 20 years ago. In my opinion, these are the four critical elements of professional counselor identity: (a) counselors approach mental health from a wellness (rather than an illness) perspective, (b) counselors believe that most mental health problems are related to a person’s developmental stage in life and therefore are transitory in nature, (c) counselors value prevention of mental health