Values of Counseling psychology

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The Counseling Psychologist

DOI: 10.1177/0011000009333986 2009; 37; 610 The Counseling Psychologist

Ted Packard Perspectives

Distinguish Counseling Psychology: Personal and Professional The 2008 Leona Tyler Award Address: Core Values that

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Author’s Note: This address was presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Boston, August 14, 2008. Please address correspondence to Ted Packard, PhD, ABPP, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112; e-mail: packard@gse .utah.edu.

The 2008 Leona Tyler Award AddressCore Values That Distinguish Counseling Psychology: Personal and Professional PerspectivesTed PackardUniversity of Utah

The empirical literature and the author’s professional experience over four decades have convinced him that concerning practice patterns and work set-tings there is little to distinguish counseling psychology from other psycho-logical practice specialties. What is distinctive are certain core values that undergird and distinguish this specialty. First, a definition of “values” is pre-sented, followed by a brief review of a limited number of studies that address the topic of values and counseling psychology. Next, the author describes a qualitative study of the perceptions and beliefs of 18 experienced counseling psychology educators and trainers about core values that distinguish the spe-cialty and set it apart from other psychology specialty practice areas. The final section presents nine proposed core values, most of which are distinctive to counseling psychology, derived logically from the themes of the literature and the interviews with the counseling psychology educators as filtered through the author’s biases and assumptions.

Leona Tyler’s text The Work of the Counselor (1961) was my introduc-tion to our profession and one of the most memorable texts that I studied

in graduate school. To receive an award and give a talk honoring someone about whom I was awestruck as a student is a signal honor and a sobering responsibility. The Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP) has been my home base for more than four decades, and it’s great to be here today with so many good friends and colleagues, both present and future. I’m very grateful to the society and to all those who made this award possible.

The Counseling PsychologistVolume 37 Number 4

May 2009 610-624© 2009 SAge Publications

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Society of Counseling Psychology, Division 17 of the American Psychological Association



Packard / Core Values of Counseling Psychology 611

Special thanks to my sneaky nominators—Bob Hill, Susan Phillips, and Mike Patton—whose surreptitious work I learned of after the fact. And my gratitude and admiration to the many colleagues, students, and friends with whom I’ve labored for many years at the University of Utah and across the nation. Collectively, they and you have contributed enormously to a won-derful life for my family and me.

Quite a few years ago, I read a small book (Bennion, 1978) in which a philosopher friend explored what he called “the subjective world of values.” The book and particularly its title—The Things That Matter Most—made a lasting impression. In this talk I attempt to frame what possibly might “mat-ter most” about the special area of practice and research we know affection-ately as counseling psychology. In the 1980s there was speculation by prominent scholars that counseling psychology was no longer distinctive and, in terms of theories of intervention, practice methods, and work set-tings, had become much like clinical psychology (Fitzgerald & Osipow, 1986, 1988; Watkins, Lopez, Campbell, & Himmell, 1986). Then in 1996 and again in 2003 the Professional examination Service carried out com-prehensive analyses of what professional psychologists actually do in their work settings (greenberg & Jesuitus, 2003; greenberg, Smith, & Muenzen, 1996). The studies were commissioned by the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards and provided content validity for the examination for the Professional Practice of Psychology. No differ-ences in practice patterns between counseling and clinical psychologists were apparent.

Nonetheless, many of our colleagues perceive us as being different, but in more illusive and subjective ways. Respected colleagues who have worked for many years as administrators in major psychological organi-zations have, from time to time, volunteered interesting thoughts to me about their experiences with counseling psychologists, one of them even saying that “counseling psychologists are wonderful people!” Another recent statement from an esteemed noncounseling psychology colleague goes as follows:

Counseling psychologists are the heart and conscience of the profession. They are attuned to the affective side of human behavior and strive to ensure the comfort of colleagues, friends, and clients.

I suspect you’ve all heard stories like these, and you know how congenial and energetic we are at the American Psychological Association (APA) social hours! And as someone who has attended meetings of the various psychology



612 The Counseling Psychologist

training councils, I’m here to attest that the annual Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs (CCPTP) meeting has a distinctive feel—not better, just different in a supportive and socially positive way.

Another example of our distinctiveness, this time with empirical under-pinnings, can be found on the O-NeT online occupational information database (http://online.onetcenter.org). The Occupational Interest Profiles presented on O-NeT are derived from Holland’s (1997) codes. The pri-mary occupational interest for counseling psychologists is “social,” which is defined in part as “helping or providing service to others.” In the three-term Holland code for counseling psychologists, “Social” is followed by “Investigative” and then “Artistic.” So in general, folks like you and me can be proud members of the SIA Club. But the empirical ordering of the inter-est codes is reversed for our clinical, school, industrial/organizational (I/O), and psychiatrist colleagues, with Investigative coming first, fol-lowed by various combinations of Artistic, Social, and in the case of I/O, “enterprising.” Although interests and values are not synonymous terms, a basic interest in “helping or providing service to others” sounds suspiciously like a value to me.

exploring a subjective and slippery concept such as “values” necessi-tates a clear and comprehensive definition of the term. Of the various sources I consulted, I felt most comfortable with a definition presented in our own Dictionary of Psychology, published last year by the APA: “Value (noun). A moral, social, or aesthetic principle accepted by an individual or society as a guide to what is good, desirable, or important” (2007, p. 975). The purpose of my presentation is to stimulate our thinking about the “good, desirable, or important” core values that provide a foundation for our work as counseling psychologists. In discussing this topic, I’ll first review some relevant literature and then report on a stimulating series of interviews I had with 18 experienced and respected colleagues, all of whom have been involved directly in the education of new generations of coun-seling psychologists.

Review of Selected Literature

If you’ve been a student in a counseling psychology doctoral program during the past decade, you’ve likely read gelso and Fretz’s (2001) excellent text titled Counseling Psychology. Although they don’t emphasize the term “value” in their introductory chapter, they describe five “unifying themes” that collectively “help bring together the diverse aspects of the specialty and




clarify how counseling psychology is differentiated from specialties within and outside of psychology” (gelso & Fretz, 2001, p. 22). In general, the themes appear to describe the authors’ view of what is “good, desirable, or impor-tant” about counseling psychology as follows:

1. A focus on intact as opposed to severely disturbed personalities.2. Attention to people’s assets and strengths regardless of degree of

disturbance.3. emphasis on relatively brief interventions.4. Attention to person-environment interactions rather than an exclusive

focus on either the person or the environment.5. emphasis on educational and career development and environments.

(gelso & Fretz, 2001, p. 22)

In their 1988 summary article, Rude, Weissberg, and gazda reported on the Third National Conference for Counseling Psychology and stated that “counseling psychologists have a common core of shared values and goals” (p. 424). The shared values, they said, were represented by wide acceptance of the scientist-practitioner model and a traditional focus by counseling psy-chologists on positive mental health, careers, client strengths, prevention, development, empowerment of those we serve, and sensitivity to sociocul-tural contexts and cross-cultural issues.

In a recent impassioned statement, Duplock (2006) noted that counseling psychology has emphasized the value and necessity of the therapeutic rela-tionship as a critical aspect of professional practice and one that distinguishes our specialty as it “stand[s] above technology and manualisation.” Whether one agrees or not with her technology conclusion, it is hard to dispute the emphasis on the necessity and importance of the relationship in all that we do.

In a detailed analysis of counseling psychology values, Howard (1992) made a number of generalizations of relevance to our topic. Notable are the following three statements: First, a core part of counseling psychology’s identity is “an appreciation of the personal, the subjective, the individual, and the agentic,” the latter concept referring to individual agency or choice (Howard, 1992, p. 419). Second, “shared values represent the most critical component of our identity and . . . highlight why we are different from other psychologists and capable of making unique contributions” (Howard, 1992, p. 423). And third, “our shared core values . . . serve as the glue for a spe-cialty that reveres and encourages diversity and subjectivity” (Howard, 1992, p. 423). Unlike most articles focusing on values, Howard constructed




an instrument and collected and analyzed data. The instrument consisted of 19 values statements, the first 6 of which were constructed by Howard and the next 8 drafted by Division 17 colleagues and then edited by Howard. The final 5 statements in the instrument were from a 1984 article by Kimble and represented positivistic values associated with general psychology. The resulting instrument was then used in two separate studies, the first involv-ing 56 academic or practitioner counseling psychologists and the second comparing responses from 51 counseling psychology faculty members with 76 “other” psychology faculty members from 10 departments of psychol-ogy, each of which at the time included a counseling psychology program. In general, results from both studies indicated that counseling psychologists endorsed the 14 counseling psychology value statements to a substantially greater degree than the 5 general psychology statements, and the reverse was true for the faculty members representing other areas of psychology. Quite a feat for Professor Howard to pull off. And how might his work inform this project? Directly, I think, so consider Howard’s 14 counseling psychology value statements that follow:

1. Respect for the individual is desirable. 2. Diversity is good (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, religion, sexual orientation). 3. good interpersonal relationships are important. 4. A satisfactory and productive career is desirable. 5. growth and development (rather than pathology and remediation) are

often preferred conceptual lenses for viewing human problems. 6. A scientist-practitioner orientation can lead to both good science and

good practice. 7. Counseling psychologists can intervene in lots of settings/methods/

ways. 8. Counseling psychologists emphasize increasing a client’s ability to solve

problems, make decisions, and cope more effectively. . . . 9. Counseling psychologists foster an awareness of oppression and societal

barriers to self-actualization and free choices.10. Personality and psychopathology are strongly influenced by environ-

mental factors.11. Counseling psychologists advocate an altruistic rather than entrepre-

neurial approach to their work. . . .12. Open-mindedness, methodological diversity, and theoretical ecumenism

are important intellectual skills.13. Prevention is preferable to dealing with existing problems.14. A holistic approach to mind-body-environment issues is encouraged.

(1992, pp. 423-425)




In a recent policy statement, the CPTP, ACCTA, and SCP (2009) under-scored the importance of cultural and individual diversity in the education and training of counseling psychology doctoral students, interns, and post-doctoral residents. The authors’ task was to draft the Counseling Psychology Model Training Values Statement Addressing Diversity. Subsequently, the document was endorsed by the ACCTA, CCPTP, and SCP and is an unequivocal statement of the value placed by these counseling psychology organizations on cultural and individual diversity. The statement describes multicultural communities as including “people of diverse racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds; national origins; religious, spiritual and political beliefs; physical abilities; ages; genders; gender identities, sexual orientations, and physical appearance” (Bieschke et al., 2006, p. 1), and definitions of diver-sity in APA’s ethics Code and guidelines and Principles for Accreditation also are referenced. The diversity model training statement reinforces the central value accorded by counseling psychology to cultural and individual diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice.

The final entry in this review of relevant literature comes from an impor-tant but little-known January 2005 action of the executive board of the SCP as reported in the Minutes section of the January 2006 issue of The Counseling Psychologist. Under the direction of former President Puncky Heppner, Sandra Shullman (then a member of the APA’s board of directors and a counseling psychologist skilled in organizational development) facilitated a comprehensive SCP strategic planning process. The 24 indi-viduals who participated in the board meeting included Division 17 elected officers, section leaders, editors of relevant publications, liaisons from related organizations, Student Affiliate group doctoral student cochairs, and administrative assistants. The group was broadly representative of the education and training side of counseling psychology. After considerable interaction, the executive board agreed on the following three “enduring goals,” each representing certain core values, to be implemented by the SCP for at least the 5-year period 2006-2010.

1. Make significant contributions to diversity in the SCP, the APA, and the larger society.

2. Make strength-based, developmental, and contextual approaches more mainstream in psychology and (more) associated with the SCP (including vocational psychology).

3. Further the integration of science and practice in all areas, e.g., policy, advocacy, and education. (SCP, 2006, pp. 193-194)




Interviews With 18 Counseling Psychology Educators

We turn now to an examination of the interviews I conducted with 18 experienced and knowledgeable counseling psychology educators and lead-ers. Two of my participants have been directors of comprehensive university counseling centers that included both internship and practicum-level train-ing. All of the remainder are, or have been, training directors of counseling psychology doctoral programs; several have chaired departments; all of the participants have supervised students; and most have at times provided direct services of one form or another. I restricted this group to educators/trainers partly out of necessity (my resources for conducting the project being limited) but mainly from a conviction that educators and trainers are involved centrally in socializing students into counseling psychology and passing on core values and attitudes that represent the foundation of our specialty. However, the exclusion of full-time practitioners is a limitation that needs to be kept in mind.

Seventeen of the participants had doctoral degrees in counseling psy-chology, 1 in counselor education, and the years when their PhDs were bestowed ranged from 1966 to 1995 with a median of 1979. Their degrees were from 15 doctoral programs at 14 universities, with the vast majority being accredited programs either at the time or currently. eight of the par-ticipants were females and 10 were male. each interview lasted approxi-mately 25 to 45 minutes; some were done in person (at national meetings or in my hometown) and the remainder using a speaker telephone. My data collection method was simple and straightforward. As each participant spoke, I typed furiously on my laptop, stopping every two to four sentences for feedback and corrective editing of the transcript. Prior to the interview, each participant received an e-mail that stated the definition of values being used (something considered to be “good, desirable, or important” as defined earlier) and listed the three interview questions that are outlined in the following paragraphs. I was surprised at the degree to which most par-ticipants had prepared for the interviews and very pleased and impressed with their enthusiastic and thoughtful responses.

Question 1: Thinking back, how would you describe any of your personal values that influenced your decision to pursue a career in counseling psychology?

My own experience in choosing counseling psychology as a career prompted me to begin the interviews with this question. For immature and




inappropriate reasons, I majored in geology my first 2 years in college. (Two of my hardcore backpacking buddies and I had decided on this major because we could continue our adventures in the great outdoors!) Then 3 years intervened when my time was divided between full-time service for my church and a stint on active duty in the U.S. Army. I came back a changed man with a strong commitment to a career that involved helping others and having had my cultural awareness expanded dramatically from the extensive diversity I experienced in the military. When I discovered that science was a part of professional psychology, and that counseling psychol-ogy emphasized strengths and “normality” and offered a wide array of work settings, my career path was clear. Looking back on that challenging time with no regrets, it is clear that the maturation of personal values was very influential in my career decision.

The stories told by the participants were fascinating, varied, and even inspirational. Table 1 highlights statements that provide insight into how personal values influenced the career decision making of 18 seasoned counseling psychology colleagues.

In summary, although the frequently cited “helping others” theme is a value that characterizes many professions, and chance factors are certainly evident in the above, a number of the values represented in the vignettes are distinctive aspects of counseling psychology such as “strengths,” “normality,” “respect,” “diversity,” “justice,” and so forth.

Question 2: given your professional experiences to date, what do you per-ceive as core values that distinguish and support counseling psychology as a distinctive area of professional practice and scientific inquiry?

I reviewed the 18 typescripts several times, listing all words and phrases that represented or inferred a counseling psychology value. I then consid-ered the value terms, eliminated those mentioned only a single time (with one exception), and combined the others into nine thematic clusters that I judged to be logically related (e.g., work/career was often mentioned in relationship to life span development). The results of this exercise are summarized in Table 2. Note that I’ve indicated the number of participants whose responses fit logically into a given value cluster and have also included a column sum-marizing representative comments from participant narratives.

The participant’s responses to Question 2 informed the proposed core values presented in the final section of this article. But before leaving this section, I want to discuss briefly the question of remediation as a value associated with counseling psychology. goodyear and colleagues (2008)




Table 1Values Expressed by Participants in Response to Question 1

1. “I was a social activist as a young guy and had a strong desire to help relatively normal people who were struggling with abnormal circumstances. Counseling psychology seemed compatible with these values.” 2. “One of my early values focused on diversity and multiculturalism . . . my grandma rented a room to a woman from India who intrigued me . . . a close young friend was from a Jewish family . . . in high school I had a pen pal from Venezuela . . . in college I had an assigned ‘sister’ from South America. . . . I was very incensed when our sorority adviser told us it was not a good idea to pledge a Japanese student.” 3. “I grew up in a Jewish family whose core value was tikkun olum (meaning ‘to repair the world’), and this influenced me greatly.” 4. “My mother cared deeply about fairness, underdogs, the ‘have-nots,’ and making people’s lives better. Her values became an underpinning to my feminism and multiculturalism.” 5. “It was the emphasis on human strengths in Fred Borgen’s class that contrasted with the abnormal psychology course I was taking at the same time.” 6. “I grew up in a blue-collar family, had no idea what career to pursue, but eventually was attracted to the humanistic values of Carl Rogers.” 7. “Counseling psychology became a way to understand myself, my relationship to others and to my social world, and to help others grow and develop.” 8. “growing up, the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King were my heroes who represented values of respect, dignity, and equal treatment of others. I was strongly attracted when I discovered these values were central to counseling psychology.” 9. “As a young kid in the 1960s, I developed a strong interest in underdogs and underprivileged people. Later, I was drawn toward counseling rather than clinical because it was less objectifying, more humanistic, and seemed to include the idea of justice.”10. “I was really interested in helping people who were not crazy where the focus was on mobilizing their resources and strengths.”11. “I first majored in police science and was the only woman on the college pistol team! Then in the mid-1960s I got involved in social justice activism. When I took a course in my master’s program in what we now call multicultural counseling, I was hooked!”12. “I was strongly attracted to the idea of helping people, so I switched my major from music to psychology, read Leona Tyler’s and the Pepinskys’ books on counseling, and then applied to several doctoral programs.”13. “I remember when I was 20 or 21 wanting to be able to think about intellectually stimulating questions in relation to helping people live their lives better.”14. “High on my list was an impulse to help others, and the counseling people were more receptive than the clinical folks who said I needed to have an undergraduate psychology major instead of my math and physics majors.”15. “I got interested in counseling through undergraduate experience as a head resident in the residence halls. I especially admired, respected, and had fun with Counseling Center staff members who taught me to lead life-planning workshops.”

(continued)




recently published a comprehensive analysis of roles and functions of coun-seling psychologists from data gathered in 1986 and 14 years later in 2000 using essentially the same instrument. They documented significant stability across a variety of work activities and settings but also noted a continuing emphasis on remediation and corresponding decreases in interventions clas-sified as preventive and developmental, most notably career counseling. The 1980s studies referred to in an earlier section reached similar conclusions (Fitzgerald & Osipow, 1986, 1988; Watkins et al., 1986). The reality is that many counseling psychologists who practice independently or in commu-nity mental health agencies, Veterans Administration centers, or behavioral health systems frequently work with dysfunctional clients, do Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., 1994) diagnoses, and provide services we classify as “remedial.” Does this mean they are no longer counseling psychologists or must abandon their allegiances to coun-seling psychology’s traditional values concerning developmental, strength-based, and holistic approaches? goodness, no! Why abandon the positive worldview associated with many of counseling psychology’s values simply because you work with troubled clients struggling with significant prob-lems and must submit formal diagnoses in order to be reimbursed? A more realistic and beneficial approach involves acknowledging that many coun-seling psychologists indeed work with troubled clients and noting that their effectiveness is or can be enhanced, rather than diminished, by the positive values that inform their interventions and support and sustain our specialty.

Question 3: Projecting into the future, which of these core values do you believe to be most critical for maintaining counseling psychology as a viable and vibrant contributor to the long-term development of the disci-pline and profession of psychology?

Table 1 (continued)

16. “When I was 15 and growing up in a small town, I thought Bob Newhart had the best job I’d ever seen (playing a psychologist on a popular TV comedy series), and my mother then got me a subscription to Psychology Today! This plus wanting to help others and having a lot of natural curiosity eventually pushed me towards counseling psychology.”17. “I had taken Women’s Studies and was into feminism and decided I wanted to work with ‘normal’ people. Counseling psychology seemed a very good fit.”18. “I stumbled into a counseling class as an undergraduate, got trained in basic counseling skills, and ended up working in a crisis center. From these experiences I felt involved, accepted, and valued and saw in counseling psychology a deep respect for people.”




Values

Service/helping/altruism

Relationship/ interpersonal process

Humanistic values

Science/practice integration (inquiry)

Scientific pluralism/multimethods

Developmental (life span)

Work and career

Prevention

Strengths (resilience, normality, positive coping)

Holistic (whole person, wellness)

Person/environment/ context

Respect/acceptance/ dignity/autonomy/ choice

Cultural and individual diversity

Social justice and advocacy

Collaboration (affiliation)

Internationalization

Remediation

n

2

6

4

6

2

10

7

3

10

8

3

7

10

8

2 4

1

Representative Quotations From Participants

“Altruism underlies all practice.” (Service is mentioned frequently in Question 1 and is a value basic to all helping professions.)

“The interpersonal process is the core of change in counseling and psychotherapy.”

“Quality relationships are a central value in humanistic psychology and part of CPs’ base from the beginning.”

“Our focus on integrating science and practice has sustained our specialty and given long-term credibility.”

“CP has accepted methodological diversity to a greater degree than other psychological specialties.”

“Our comprehensive perspective distinguishes us from the narrower focus of other psychological specialties.”

“Work and career are essential aspects of everyone’s life and a major component of healthy development.”

“Preventing potential problems promotes healthy individual and societal development.”

“CP emphasizes strengths, resilience, what’s ‘right’ with the person, how we’re different nonpathologically, et cetera.”

“CP appreciates the whole person and all the roles in which they are involved.”

“Our holistic viewpoint emphasizes understanding and working with people in their social and cultural contexts.”

“I think of the current core values of CP as encompassing the word respectfulness.”

“CPs emphasis on diversity is really about respect, dignity, equal treatment, and inclusion for all people.”

“CP embraced diversity early on, and this has led to our current valuing of social justice and advocacy.”

“We value collaboration, an important and necessary skill for interdisciplinary practice and research.”

“Sharing CP with the world is absolutely essential.”

“Our emphasis on promoting strengths, normal development, and interpersonal engagement is most effective with dysfunctional as well as ‘normal’ clients.”


Note: CP = counseling psychology.




All of the participants provided interesting and thought-provoking com-ments. Table 3 contains brief excerpts that represent their projections about future core values for counseling psychology.


1. “All of the above! . . . normative, healthy, developmental, resiliency, strength-based, multiculturalism, diversity, and social justice.” 2. “The diversity piece is very important because of the absolutely essential internationalization of our field, and our contribution to this endeavor is critical.” 3. “Deal head on with the diversity of values in CP and in psychology in general and strive to understand more clearly what is ‘good.’ ” 4. “Apply CP to new issues and challenges and increase collaboration with disciplines and professions within and outside of psychology.” 5. “Maintain scientific rigor that for me involves an orientation toward scientific realism as opposed to unrestrained advocacy.” 6. “The altruistic impulse has to remain; if that’s lost the specialty will have no identity. Also, we cannot move away from our scientist/practitioner approach.” 7. “I hope our culture of respectfulness continues in a professional world full of opportunities to focus mainly on diagnosis and pathology.” 8. “Our future will be dependent upon continuing to attract curious, intelligent, and creative new counseling psychologists.” 9. “Helping individuals and groups develop characteristics and skills that make things better for themselves, others, and the world.”10. “Maintain our perspectives on strength-based development, the importance of diversity in all its dimensions, and understanding the central role of work in people’s lives.”11. “Our focus on personal and interpersonal relationships is central and necessary for the long-term survival of our specialty.”12. “As with our approach to individuals, our specialty needs to be open to change and continue to grow, develop, and evolve.”13. “A big-picture view of human development connects necessarily to issues of social justice, and implementing these values globally is exceedingly important.”14. “Be more assertive about our rightful place in the positive psychology movement and about the value of humanistic/holistic approaches that have long characterized CP.”15. “We need to maintain our values and philosophy more so than our techniques and methods.”16. “I especially highlight the notion of respect and inclusion that promotes interdisciplinary work and broad outreach to institutions and society at large.”17. “Make sure that our specialty maintains its integrity [and] produces the best and brightest possible, protect the public, and use our knowledge wisely.”18. “CP must continue to advocate for the values of respect, dignity, equal treatment, and inclusion for all, both in our country and the world at large.”

Note: CP = counseling psychology.




Proposed Core Values for Counseling Psychology

What follows are nine proposed core values, most of which are distinc-tive to counseling psychology, derived logically from the themes discussed in the literature review and the interviews with counseling psychology edu-cators as filtered through my own biases and assumptions. Note again our definition of value is “a guide to what is good, desirable, or important.”

1. Altruism is our foundation as we strive to enhance the welfare of others.2. Positive relationships are a necessary condition for stimulating change in

those we seek to help.3. The synergistic integration of science and practice is essential to our

work and includes use of various methods of inquiry.4. We focus on healthy development across the life span, including work

and career, and seek to prevent avoidable problems as well as optimize individual and societal growth.

5. From a holistic frame of reference, we emphasize strengths, resilience, and positive coping in the context of the person’s social and cultural environments.

6. We are committed to respectful treatment for all, inherent human dignity, inclusion rather exclusion, and accepting and celebrating cultural and individual diversity.

7. We believe in social justice and the necessity, on occasion, of advocacy for just causes that promote the welfare of others.

8. We value collaboration, multidisciplinary practice and research, and sharing counseling psychology with colleagues in our own country and around the world.

9. In our remedial work with dysfunctional clients and systems, whenever possible we focus on strengths and positive coping in the context of a helping relationship.

Epilogue

In a final brief article published in 1992, a year before her death at the age of 86, Leona Tyler spoke of diminishing differences between clinical and counseling psychology. Her recommendation was to maintain separate training programs but to prepare students in both specialties to deal with “choices” (one of her favorite counseling concepts) and “problems,” or what we now often refer to as remediation. In a closing sentence she stated, “Whatever happens to counseling psychology as a profession, counseling psychology as a skill must not be lost” (Tyler, 1992, p. 344).




Fifteen years later we are a healthy and robust specialty, as are our clinical colleagues. We have not lost our skills, and we need to be equally sure that we do not lose sight of the distinctive values that distinguish counseling psychology.1

Note

1. I learned of the 1992 Tyler article when I read the wonderful Tyler Award Address given in 1999 by Ursula Delworth, an esteemed and departed colleague, titled “Leona Tyler: explorer and Map Maker.”

References

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Duplock, S. (2006). Just what is it that makes contemporary Counselling Psychology so dif-ferent, so appealing? Counselling Psychology Review, 21, 22-32.

Fitzgerald, L. F., & Osipow, S. H. (1986). An occupational analysis of counseling psychology: How special is the specialty? American Psychologist, 41, 535-544.

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goodyear, R. K., Murdock, N., Lichtenberg, J. W., McPherson, R., Koetting, K., & Petren, S. (2008). Stability and change in counseling psychologists’ identities, roles, functions, and career satisfaction across 15 years. The Counseling Psychologist, 36, 220-249.

greenberg, S., & Jesuitus, L. (2003). Study of the practice of licensed psychologists in the United States and Canada. New York: Professional examination Service.

greenberg, S., Smith, I. L., & Muenzen, P. (1996). Study of the practice of licensed psycholo-gists in the United States and Canada. New York: Professional examination Service.

Holland, J. L. (1997). Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and career choices (3rd ed). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Howard, g. S. (1992). Behold our creation! What counseling psychology has become and might yet become. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 39, 419-442.

Kimble, g. A. (1984). Psychology’s two cultures. American Psychologist, 39, 833-839.




Rude, S. S., Weissberg, M., & gazda, g. M. (1988). Looking to the future: Themes from the Third National Conference for Counseling Psychology. The Counseling Psychologist, 16, 423-430.

Society of Counseling Psychology. (2006). Minutes of executive Board Meeting held January 26, 2005. The Counseling Psychologist, 34, 190-195.

Tyler, L. e. (1961). The work of the counselor (2nd ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Tyler, L. e. (1992). Counseling psychology—Why? Professional Psychology: Research and

Practice, 23, 342-344.Watkins, C. e., Jr., Lopez, F. g., Campbell, V. L., & Himmell, C. D. (1986). Contemporary

counseling psychology: Results of a national survey. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 33, 301-309.

Ted Packard, PhD, ABPP, is Professor emeritus of educational Psychology at the University of Utah where he has been for over 4 decades. His two all-time favorite assignments at the U of U included serving as training director for the Counseling Psychology doctoral program for many years and directing the University’s Counseling Center for a decade. A former president of the Utah Psychological Association, the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards, and the American Board of Professional Psychology, he has also chaired APA’s ethics Committee and, more recently, The Commission on Accreditation. Topics of long time interest include professional ethics and standards, accreditation and credentialing, and the values that undergird our work as counseling psychologists.



Documents

Values of Counseling psychology