Counselor Professional Identity: Findings and Implications for Counseling and Interprofessional Collaboration

The counseling profession has long struggled to establish a cohesive professional identity for counselors (e.g., Calley & Hawley, 2008; Gale & Austin, 2003; Hanna & Bemak, 1997; Myers, Sweeney, & White, 2002; Swickert, 1997). Despite attempts to define the profession, researchers have not examined the professional identity of practicing counselors, nor have they investigated differences in terms of counselor training, credentialing, and specialization, differences that could present real challenges to establishing one cohesive professional identity for counselors (Cashwell, Kleist, & Scofield, 2009; Gale & Austin, 2003). These challenges seem to be amplified by difficulties clearly distinguishing the tasks associated with specific counseling specializations from the profession of counseling (Cashwell et al., 2009; Hanna & Bemak, 1997). As a result, a shared identity for the counseling profession remains elusive, making it difficult for many counselors to articulate a clear professional identity and describe overlapping and distinct characteristics among counseling and related helping professions (Calley & Hawley, 2008; Cashwell et al., 2009; Gale & Austin, 2003). Although the counseling profession struggles to clearly articulate a unified professional identity, interprofessional collaboration with related helping professions is increasingly supported as a best practice strategy for addressing some of the nation's most critical social problems, such as education, mental health, and health care (Keyton & Stallworth, 2002). The combined knowledge and skills of collaborators from multiple professions supports the generation of creative approaches for addressing these problems; however, an inability to articulate distinct professional identities among collaborators often results in (a) confusion about roles and responsibilities, (b) conflicts related to power and status, and (c) the proliferation of professional stereotypes that jeopardizes the effectiveness of interprofessional collaboration (King & Ross, 2003; Waxman, Weist, & Benson, 1999). This may result in unique struggles for counselors engaged in interprofessional collaboration at an operational level, especially because counseling is the youngest of the helping professions (i.e., psychology, social work). Because counseling is the newest profession, the professional identity of counselors may be especially unclear, and, as a result, the roles and responsibilities of counselors may not be optimized within interprofessional collaboration. The purpose of this study was to explore the professional identity of practicing counselors and to identify implications for interprofessional collaboration. * Counselor Professional Identity Specific attempts to establish a unified identity for the counseling profession are well documented in the literature (e.g., Hanna & Bemak, 1997; McAuliffe & Eriksen, 1999). Such efforts have primarily focused on identifying a philosophical orientation unique to counseling. More specifically, scholars have argued that counseling can be distinguished from related helping professions because of its developmental, prevention, and wellness orientation toward helping (Flaherty et al., 1998; McAuliffe & Eriksen, 1999). McAuliffe and Eriksen (1999) suggested that this may be a challenging identity for counselors to embrace, however, because few practical methods for implementing this orientation into counseling practice have been developed. Additionally, the focus on pathology within the dominant culture prioritizes intervention over prevention (McAuliffe & Eriksen, 1999). In a review of interviews with senior contributors published in the Journal of Counseling & Development, tension between a desire for the profession to continue to align with the philosophical orientation of human development, prevention, and wellness versus practice realities that indicate a need to increase knowledge of the medical model and a focus on pathology was clear (Gale & Austin, 2003). …