From guidance discourse to counseling discourse: a Research in Critical Psychology

From the perspective of critical psychology, the concepts of science have a historical-social aspect. Psychology is generally considered to be the result of a process of knowledge accumulation. But critical psychology, as an interdisciplinary science in the humanities, considers psychological concepts to be historical and consistent with certain socio-historical contexts. "Guidance and counseling" has been the focus of many researchers over the past half-century. The purpose of this study was to examine these concepts from the perspective of critical historiography. In this form of historiography, the phenomenon under study is examined from the perspective of "discontinuity". The findings of this study showed that Iranian psychology has shifted from the "discourse of guidance" to the "discourse of counseling" over the past half-century. The first discourse was formed and dominated from the 1940s to the 1970s, and the second from the 1970s to the present. As a result, the "discourse of guidance to specific jobs" was replaced by the "discourse of counseling, skills training, and self-direction". Finally, while summarizing the findings, the relationship between these two discourses and the changes in the political economy of the 1970s was discussed.