Basic Concepts of Counseling

What is counseling? The word "consulting" in Chinese has the meaning of discussing, inquiring, planning and seeking advice. Initially, consultation and inquiry were two words, consultation for discussion and inquiry for questioning. The word "consulting" was first used in the Book of Songs, which has the verse "carry the load and drive, Zhou Ai consulting", meaning that the ruler condemned the envoys to make the envoys attentively visit the people's sufferings in order to report to the world. In ancient times, the strategists, advisers, military advisers and diners who gave advice to the rulers were those who specialized in advisory activities. Of course, the consulting activities and the understanding of the term "consulting" in ancient China were more random and arbitrary, which is not the same as the modern consulting activities.

In English, the opposite is the verb consult and the noun consultation, the French word is consultter, from the Latin consulto, meaning consultation, consultant, evaluation, diagnosis, understanding of opinions, etc.

There is also the word consulting, which means "to consult".

There are also foreign scholars who, from a behavioral point of view, refer to consultation as a kind of "intervention" and "intervention". In Japan, people call counseling as "diagnosis". 1972 British publication "Oxford Dictionary" to the definition of counseling is: "competent to provide professional advice and services." In 1982, the book "Consulting Engineers" published in the U.S. defined engineers engaged in engineering consulting as "consulting engineers are independent professional engineers who provide professional engineering services to their clients on a billing basis" and "they sell their services, their knowledge, and their judgment". ".

As an intellectually intensive knowledge service industry, the modern meaning of consulting refers to the specialized skills from outside the individual and the organization, which uses specialized knowledge, information, and experience as resources to provide solutions to a problem or decision-making recommendations for different user needs.