The brief history of personnel counseling in industrial-organizational psychology

Although personnel counseling was once considered to be at the cutting edge of psychology applied to the workplace, the practice has been virtually ig nored in historical treatments of the field. This article tells the story o f the rise and fall of personnel counseling in organizations. The contribut ions of Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne research team to the intellectual foun dations of personnel counseling are described, and the characteristics of c ounseling programs in the 1940s and 1950s are examined. Finally. the legacy of personnel counseling and the historical role of mental health in indust rial organizational psychology are discussed, (C) 1999 Academic Press.