DSST Fundamentals of Counseling cheat sheet

Frank Parsons (1909, Boston) is credited with founding the vocational guidance movement; his trait-and-factor approach matched personal traits to occupational requirements.

The National Vocational Guidance Association (1913) was the first professional guidance organization in the United States; it later merged into the American Personnel and Guidance Association (1952), renamed the American Counseling Association in 1992.

Carl Rogers published Counseling and Psychotherapy in 1942 and Client-Centered Therapy in 1951, shifting the field from directive advice-giving to nondirective, relationship-based practice.

The National Defense Education Act (1958), passed after Sputnik, funded school counselor training and dramatically expanded the profession in the United States.

The Community Mental Health Centers Act (1963) moved counseling into community agencies and broadened it beyond schools and vocational placement.

E. G. Williamson developed directive trait-and-factor counseling at Minnesota; the Minnesota Point of View emphasized counselor-led analysis of the client's assets and limitations.

The Association for Counselor Education and Supervision and the American Personnel and Guidance Association produced the first formal counselor preparation standards in the 1960s, beginning accreditation and credentialing movements.

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP, 1981) and the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC, 1982) standardized training and certification; state licensure followed.

Core counselor functions: individual and group counseling, assessment and appraisal, consultation, coordination of services, referral, and program development/evaluation.

Counselors consult with parents, teachers, and agencies (triadic consultation) rather than only treating the identified client directly.

Counselors follow a referral decision rule: refer when the problem exceeds the counselor's competence, training, or scope of practice, and continue coordination rather than abandoning the client.

Confidentiality has recognized limits: imminent danger to self or others, suspected abuse of children or vulnerable adults, court order, and client waiver; Tarasoff-type duties require protective action.

Informed consent requires disclosure of counseling nature, risks, benefits, alternatives, fees, confidentiality limits, and the right to withdraw at any time.

The ACA Code of Ethics (2014) prohibits sexual or romantic relationships with current clients and their family members and requires a minimum of five years after termination for former clients.

Counselors avoid dual or multiple relationships when they risk impairment or exploitation; when unavoidable, they document safeguards and monitor for harm.

Record-keeping standards require secure storage, retention per state law, and release only with written client authorization or legal mandate.

Rogers' core conditions for therapeutic change: unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding, congruence (genuineness), and client-counselor psychological contact.

Empathy is the counselor's sensing of the client's internal frame of reference as if it were one's own, without losing the "as if" quality.

Unconditional positive regard means prizing the client as a person regardless of behavior; it is not approval of all behavior.

Congruence (genuineness) means the counselor's outward communication matches inner experience; incongruence is communicated and disrupts trust.

The working alliance (Bordin) has three components: agreement on goals, agreement on tasks, and the emotional bond.

Transference is the client's projection of past relational patterns onto the counselor; countertransference is the counselor's own unresolved reactions to the client.

Therapeutic presence, active listening, and accurate reflection of feeling are the observable microskills that operationalize the core conditions.

Boundaries and power differentials: the counselor holds expert and role power, so boundary crossings must be judged by whose needs they serve and whether they risk harm.

Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic: Freud; id, ego, superego; unconscious conflict; defense mechanisms; transference; techniques include free association, dream analysis, and interpretation.

Adlerian: inferiority feelings and striving for superiority, birth order, lifestyle, social interest; goal-oriented and present/future-focused; techniques include early recollection and "the question."

Person-centered: Rogers; self-concept, conditions of worth, actualizing tendency; nondirective; counselor uses reflection, paraphrase, and silence rather than interpretation.

Behavioral: classical and operant conditioning; techniques include systematic desensitization (Wolpe), token economies, shaping, modeling, and exposure; focus on observable behavior.

Cognitive-behavioral and REBT: Ellis' ABCDE model (Activating event, Belief, Consequence, Dispute, Effect) targets irrational beliefs; Beck's cognitive therapy targets cognitive distortions and automatic thoughts.

Gestalt: Perls; here-and-now awareness, unfinished business, contact boundary disturbances; techniques include the empty chair and role rehearsal.

Systemic/family: Bowen's differentiation of self and multigenerational transmission; Minuchin's structural family therapy targets boundaries, hierarchy, and subsystems.

Existential-humanistic and reality therapy: Frankl's meaning and logotherapy; Yalom's four ultimate concerns (death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness); Glasser's choice theory and WDEP (Want, Doing, Evaluate, Plan).