ABSTRACT
Counseling psychology differs from its parent field in that from its very beginnings it had adopted the P-E model as its guiding formulation. Counseling psychology evolved from the vocational gnidance movement (Super, 1955; Whitely, 1984; Williamson, 1965). In turn, modern vocational guidance is said to have started (Brewer, 1942; Paterson, 1938) with Frank Parsons, who founded the Vocation Bureau in Boston to “give scientific vocational counsel” to young people. Parsons’ (1909) posthumously published book, Choosing a Vocation, was the movement’s “bible” (Paterson, 1938). In this book, Parsons provided “practical steps that can be taken … in the selection of a vocation,” founded on a formula in which vocational choice is to be arrived at by the matching of person with occupation. This formulation is arguably the earliest version of a P-E model to appear in the counseling psychology literature (or perhaps even in psychology literature). In due course, counseling psychology progressed from the Parsons formulation to the “matching model” to trait-and-factor counseling to P-E fit theory to counseling from a P-E interaction perspective. This chapter recounts counseling psychology’s passage from Parsons to P-E fit.
