A Life History Study on the Development of the Identity of Counselor

The purpose of this study is to explore the identity development process and core identity development themes of counseling professionals. To this end, one counseling professional was interviewed and analyzed using the life history research method. The external and internal contexts of the life history of the research participant were described chronologically, and the identity development process and core identity themes formed from the reciprocity of the two contexts were analyzed. The two stories of external context and internal context were reconstructed as the identity development process of ‘the dream of a good wife and wise mother-counseling, life task-building a professional house-the care and rights of a counselor’, and the core theme of identity was metaphorized as ‘the duet of the intermediate object’. ‘The duet of the intermediate object’ means the identity performance process that integrates personal self-development and professional self-development. The agreed implications of the research results were discussed and the limitations of the research and suggestions for follow-up research were made. The significance of this study is that it explored the identity development process and the core theme of identity of a counselor who is composed of the reciprocity of the sociocultural context and the internal context of the individual from the holistic perspective of the life history approach.