The predecessor of career counseling is career counseling, which originated in America in the early 20th century. It was put forward by Parsons and others in the United States according to their own practical work experience, and summarized as a trait factor theory based on three consulting principles. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, with the appearance of career counseling theory in academic literature, especially career development theory, the word career counseling finally replaced the position of career counseling. In 1970s, the introduction and implementation of American vocational education movement promoted the application of vocational counseling in schools. Nowadays, career counseling has become an important part of school psychological counseling.
The word "occupation" evolved from via carraria in Rome and carrus in Latin. In Greek, the word "career" contains the spirit of crazy competition. It was first used as a verb, such as riding a horse, and later extended to "road", that is, the development path of life, and then developed into "the road experienced by people or things", "the development process of people's life" or "a series of roles and behaviors played by people in their life". In ancient Chinese, the word "career" has a long history. The original meaning of "life" is "life", "career" is "edge" and the combination of "career" is "life". For example, the words "livelihood" and "career" in Bai Juyi's poem "Life is a career, but home forgets wine" and Liu Changqing's poem "Dumen becomes a white head and lives on the lake" all mean "life". The word "occupation" is used in psychology, which is gradually developed with the rise of the career counseling movement. Career guidance was first put forward by American scholar Parsons in Boston from 65438 to 0908, aiming at helping social youth with employment difficulties. With the continuous development, perfection and progress of career counseling theory and practice, many psychologists have made their own explanations of "career". For example, chartres (1952) thinks that occupation refers to a person's occupation or position in work and life; MacFarlane (1969) believes that career is a series of job choices and related education or training activities formed by a person according to his long-term goals, and it is a planned career development process; Hood and Benazir (Hood &; Banathy, 1972) thinks that career includes personal choice and development of work, choice and pursuit of non-professional or leisure activities and satisfaction of participating in social activities; Hall (1978) believes that life is a person's life, accompanied by work or career-related experiences and activities; Mcdaniel (1978) thinks that occupation is the whole life state of work and leisure activities that an individual engages in all his life. Webster (1986) thinks that occupation is the general term of personal career, society and interpersonal relationship, that is, the course of personal lifelong development.