Advancing human potential.

Counseling psychology as a psychological specialty facilitates personal and interpersonal functioning across the lifespan with a focus on emotional, social, vocational, educational, health-related, developmental, and organizational concerns. Through the integration of theory, research, and practice, and with a sensitivity to multicultural issues, this specialty encompasses a broad range of practices that help people improve their well-being, alleviate distress and maladjustment, resolve crises, and increase their ability to live more highly functioning lives. Counseling psychology is unique in its attention to both normal developmental issues and to problems associated with physical, emotional, and mental disorders.

Populations served by counseling psychologists include people of all ages and cultural backgrounds. Examples 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.

Philosophy

The Counseling Psychology program offers graduate education and training designed to produce professionally competent psychologists who can facilitate improved personal and interpersonal functioning across the lifespan. It adheres to the broadly based scientist/practitioner model articulated at the Boulder Conference in 1949, developed and extended at other landmark events.

The WVU program follows an elaboration of this model that L. T. Hoshmand and D. E. Polkinghorne in 1992 called the “Practitioner-Scholar Model.” They stated that “psychological science as a human practice and psychological practice as a human science inform each other.” They emphasized the importance of “the development of reflective skills” in the practice of psychology.

The March 2008 first International Counseling Psychology Conference held in Chicago set a new direction for our profession—looking beyond the confines of North America to arenas of service that make points of contact with social, humanitarian, and cultural movements around the globe. The challenge of preparing counseling psychologists to engage in this emerging planetary paradigm provides us all with provocative and demanding implications for training, clinical skills, and personal development.

Read the core values of Counseling Psychology reflected in this philosophy.