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Bioecological Counseling

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Abstract

During the past 20 years, fields such as ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology have drawn upon life history theory to make important advances in our understanding of the ecology of human behavior, building extensively upon the earlier work of Bronfenbrenner and others. In this article, we (a) elaborate on an alternative to the traditional mental health model that is emerging from research informed by life history theory, (b) use a recent extension of Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) bioecological model to integrate applications of life history theory to humans into counseling and psychotherapy, (c) coin the term Bioecological Counseling to denote the resulting framework and chart out how it may be applied in practice at various levels (e.g., via recovery management), and then (d) identify implications for research. We hope this article stimulates interest in bioecological counseling as well as draws attention to the broader utility of evolutionary theory for counseling and psychotherapy.

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Notes

  1. In human research, extrinsic mortality has been defined as the local risk of death that is not accounted for by mating effort or parenting effort (Placek and Quinlan 2012).

  2. We conceive of the bioecological model, as well as its recent descendant, Evolutionary Ecological Systems Theory, in this way in the current article. We use the latter to organize facets of persons and their ecologies, but turn to applications of life history theory to humans for identification of specific entities and predictions about how they relate to one another.

  3. For brevity, hereafter, we use the term counseling to mean both counseling and psychotherapy. These terms are often used interchangeably but some academics and clinicians identify with one more than the other.

  4. Credit for the term, “virtual ecology,” goes to an exceptionally helpful anonymous peer reviewer.

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  1. School of Human Services, College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services, 460R Teachers-Dyer Complex, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    George B. Richardson & Blair S. Hanson-Cook

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Aurelio José Figueredo

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Richardson, G.B., Hanson-Cook, B.S. & Figueredo, A.J. Bioecological Counseling. Evolutionary Psychological Science 5, 472–486 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-019-00201-4

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