Contemporary Counseling and Its Discontents: A Counselogist on Homo Consultans

Abstract

The paper addresses risks and threats inherent in the “counseling boom”, which has affected the actual modes of help provision in guidance/counseling, and generated a unique “counseling fashion” for counseling of various kinds and hence, of various quality. Offering a critical analysis of counseling, the author proposes a few hypotheses about the phenomenon and posits that: (1) Some of the current counseling interventions—also within career counseling—are clearly market-driven; (2) Neoliberal (and post-neoliberal) social policies, as well as stratification of society, have prompted changes in the counselor’s role, who is no longer a creator of unique social services but, with the services having been marketized, has become a “commodity supplier”; and (3) Contemporary homo consultans, falling into the “clutches” of experts, becomes dependent on counselors, who exert power over him/her and appropriate his/her life.