Relationship Counseling - History

History

Marriage counseling originated in Germany in the 1920s as part of the eugenics movement. The first institutes for marriage counseling in the USA began in the 1930s, partly in response to Germany's medically directed, racial purification marriage counseling centres. It was promoted in the USA by both eugenicists such as Paul Popenoe and Robert Latou Dickinson and by birth control advocates such as Abraham and Hannah Stone who wrote 'A Marriage Manual' in 1935 and were involved with Planned Parenthood. Other founders in USA include Lena Levine and Margaret Sanger.

It wasn't until the 1950s that therapists began treating psychological problems in the context of the family. Relationship counseling as a discrete, professional service is thus a recent phenomenon. Until the late 20th century, the work of relationship counseling was informally fulfilled by close friends, family members, or local religious leaders. Psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and social workers have historically dealt primarily with individual psychological problems in a medical and psychoanalytic framework. In many less technologically advanced cultures around the world today, the institution of family, the village or group elders fulfil the work of relationship counseling. Today marriage mentoring mirrors those cultures.

With increasing modernization or westernization in many parts of the world and the continuous shift towards isolated nuclear families the trend is towards trained and accredited relationship counselors or couple therapists. Sometimes volunteers are trained by either the Government or social service institutions to help those who are in need of family or marital counseling. Many communities and government departments have their own team of trained voluntary and professional relationship counselors. Similar services are operated by many universities and colleges, sometimes staffed by volunteers from among the student peer group. Some large companies maintain a full-time professional counseling staff to facilitate smoother interactions between corporate employees, to minimize the negative effects that personal difficulties might have on work performance.

Increasingly there is a trend toward professional certification and government registration of these services. This is in part due to the presence of duty of care issues and the consequences of the counselor or therapist's services being provided in a fiduciary relationship. See also alienation of affection.