Counselling

Counseling can be defined as a relatively short-term, interpersonal, theory-based process of helping persons who are fundamentally psychologically healthy resolve developmental and situational issues. There are probably as many definitions of counseling as there are practitioners to describe it. The term was originally used by Frank Parsons in 1908. It was adopted by Carl Rogers in response to widespread prejudice in the U.S. against lay therapists and also because he was not then permitted by the psychiatry profession to call himself a psychotherapist. The difference between definitions of counseling and psychotherapy is less significant than the practitioners' perceptions of their raison d'être.