Italy

IAC Member Associations & Organizations

AssoCounseling 

Associazione Nazionale Counselor Relazionali (ANCoRE) 

Associazione Professionale Counseling (AProCo)

Associazione REICO

Società Italiana di Counseling (S.I.Co.)

Additional Counselling Associations & Organizations

Simbiosofia

Continuando a Crescere

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IAC Education Institute Members

• INSIGHT Body Mediation Counseling School

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Additional Education Institutes

IAC Member Centres/Group Practices

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The development of counselling and psychotherapy in Italy goes back a long time and is difficult to limit to a few sentences. Dr. Eduardo Weiss, born in 1889 in Triest, can be seen as a precursor to mental health counselling in Italy. He was a student of Freud. this time, however, was unfavourable for the development of the field psychoanalysis. The powerful Catholic Church and also the fascist regime regarded psychoanalysis as a threat in its autirity.

Due to the profound social changes in the post-war period, the demand for psychiatric counselling became ever stronger. In 1970 psychology finally underwent an important scientific status, with the simultaneous start of the first two psychology degrees at the universities Padua and Rom. However, academics were initially upset about mental health counselling, as they considered it too unscientific, because it did not take place in the university curricula. This was a pliable ground for the spread of private schools in counselling. With law Nr. 5 In 1989, there were strict legal controls. however, these also made it possible for private schools to award the same degree as universities.

In Italy, the ability to interpret counselling as a discipline which seeks to cooperate between clients rather than their passivity led to an extension of the interpretation of counselling. nevertheless, reductionist and positivist approaches such as traditional psychoanalysis, psichiatrie remain the main forces in the field of Italian counselling in the field of mental health.

If in fact, counselling in Italy is not a regulated profession, (i.e., is without a professional order and the State does not dictate the minimum requirements for its operation) on 14 January 2013, the Italian Parliament passed Law 4 which offers individual professionals the opportunity to have a professional association issue a certificate of quality and professional qualification to the services, under art. 4 of L. 4/2013.

This new law, by re-standardising trade associations, including those of counselling, has in fact revolutionised the world of work and has allowed, as started by art. 7 of L. 4/2013, to protect consumers and to ensure the transparency of the professional services market.

Professional associations can in fact issue to their members, subject to the necessary checks and under the responsibility of their legal representative, a relative statement:

• to the regular registration of the professional to the association
• the requirements for participation in the association
• the quality and professional qualification standards that members are required to comply with in the exercise of professional activity to maintain membership in the association.
• Guarantees provided by the association to the user, including the activation of the user counter
• of you have the professional liability insurance policy taken out by the trader

It must be also said that the possession of a certificate issued by a professional association is not a prerequisite for the exercise of counselling activity: Membership in an association is in fact free and not compulsory, unlike the requirements for regulated ordering professions.

But joining a trade association allows the members to be placed in a professional framework, which guarantees its training and enables him to comply with a precise code of ethics, protecting the client.

The areas of intervention in which a counsellor can operate as a professional are:

• personal and relational well-being (family, parenting, couple counselling, life coach)
• educational school (counselling for students, parents, teachers)
• legal framework (support in the lawyer-client relationship interventions in the forensic area
• health care (hospital, food counselling)
• social sector (interventions in prisons and in the area of social marginalities)
• spiritual sector (religious issues, spiritual crisis, pastoral counselling)
• sport (group building etc.)
• area of release (exit counselling, support for victims of abusive cults, satanic sects etc.)

Own research on counselling and psychotherapy is basically non-existent and highly dependent on North American contributions. most scholars publish their works in Italian and they are very rarely translated into English. Thus, while the Italian academic context is strongly influenced by the English-speaking world, the opposite is not happening. this prevents consultants who do not read Italian from learning from the quality work of Italian scholars.