Counseling: from the past through the present towards the future

The present chapter aims to offer some reflections in relation to the actual and future perspectives in the field of psychology of counseling. It starts with a review of the literature from past to present to build the future. Then it deals with the issues of internationalization of psychology of counseling and subsequently with quantitative and qualitative approaches in the psychology of counseling from research to intervention. Furthermore it describes promising research and intervention areas in the psychology of counseling: narrative career counseling, counseling at school, counseling for work and relationships, counseling for health and wellbeing, online counseling and new technologies. It also deals with the theme of the effectiveness of counseling interventions and finally with the issue of training of professionals in the psychology of counseling. The present chapter shows how the psychology of counseling is configured as a discipline that progressively intercepts new needs or adaptively restructures the intervention in relation to social, economic and cultural changes, expressing fully the nature of magmatic and creative discipline in relation to many challenges that contemporary society proposes.