Ideas on the Margins: Professional Counseling and Ideological Insularity

Abstract

Efforts to professionalize counseling practice have yielded extraordinary benefits to counselors. However, professionalization has also caused counselors to adopt strict definitions of their education, practices, and ethics. In order to combat the ideological insularity brought on by professionalization, several marginalized ideas are considered. The implications of these ideas and ways to overcome ideological insularity are discussed.

Talking About Counseling: A Plea to Return to Humanistic Language

“…The language, therefore, that advances professionalism is inherently opposed to the language that advances counseling processes, at least in our current technocratic culture (Hansen, ). This situation might not be problematic if counselors simply used technical, medicalized language with legislators and humanistic language with their clients and colleagues.…”

Internationalization of counseling: Integrating the Western theories and practices into the local ways

“…This could in part be due to insularity within the profession. As Kuhn (1996) asserted, “scientific conclusions always emanate from relatively isolated investigative communities and are, therefore, never objective … scientists operate within insular communities that determine the subject of the study, the questions that are allowed to be asked” (Hansen, 2010a, p. 215) and ways of conceptualization and practice. Given that the profession of counseling has been receiving enormous resistance from various institutions of the society and has been struggling with attaining societal acceptance in the last 70 years (Stockton & Güneri, 2011), the need for firm solidarity among its members was perhaps at least partially a source of such insularity.…”

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Narrative Practices in Support of Frontline Community Work With Homelessness, Mental Health, and Substance Use

“…The requirement to have an educational qualification and the professionalization of human service work can serve to separate front line workers from the very skills they need to have useful and supportive conversations. Hansen (2010) describes how the rewards of the rise of professionalism in the field of counselling have limited the discussion of some of the disadvantages of professionalism, including insularity. We are not implying that training and education are not important.…”