Counselling in the United Kingdom: past, present and future

We chart the development of counselling in Britain since the Second World W ar through to the present and speculate about possible directions counselli ng may take in the future. Our major, but not exclusive, focus is on counse lling as a developing profession and the particular role that the British A ssociation for Counselling has played in this development. To this end, we consider some of the professional issues that have preoccupied practitioner s in the field and those that may do so in the future. Thus, amongst others , we consider the relationship between counselling and psychotherapy, the c osts and benefits of counselling's increasing visibility in British society , the role that supervision has come to play in the maintenance of professi onal standards, the debate that has surrounded the issue of counsellor accr editation/registration, the development of standards and ethics and the ten sion that exists between the relational and technical aspects of counsellin g. Counselling does not exist in a vacuum, and this is seen most strikingly in the speculations that we make about future developments of counselling. Thus, for example, we argue that counselling will have to grapple with the increasing emphasis that society places on the accountability of human ser vices and with the inexorable progress occurring in the area of technologic al development. We note that counselling's response to these significant tr ends will have to be made against the backdrop of the continuing dissolutio n of barriers between previously distinct areas of human knowledge.