Counselor Licensure: What Activities Should Be Allowed?

Abstract

This article summarizes the perceptions of counselors and psychologists regarding activities that should be included in a counselor licensing law for private. independent practice.The emphasis on counselor licensure during the 1970s brought with it a need for counselors to define counseling and the specific activities that they perform. Licensing laws and the practices they describe attempt to define and set the legal parameters of a profession in rather specific terms. The relative lateness of counselors pursuing licensure has resulted in some problems and rigorous debates over just what those parameters are, particularly in relation to psychology. The fact that most state legislation defining psychology literally covers all functions of a counselor (APGA, 1975) has done a great deal to keep counselors scrambling over turf.In the past, counselors and psychologists generally have had cooperative relationships relative to licensure. Individuals with doctoral degrees in counseling were routinely licensed as psychologists. Those without academic credentials necessary for licensure quite often established private practices without calling themselves psychologists. Psychology licensing appeared actually to be certification in that the title tended to be controlled rather than both the title and practice. Recently psychology licensing boards have become more restrictive relative to credentials, however, and have taken conservative positions relative to those who practice psychology. The 1970s, for example, found doctoraltrained counselors taken to court for practicing "psychology" without licenses (Snow, 1978). One Virginia court held that if a counselor used the "tools of psychology" without being licensed as a psychologist, that person was violating the Virginia psychology licensing law. Essentially, the court said that counseling was a separate profession from psychology, thus requiring separate legislation (Swanson,