PREPROFESSIONAL SOCIALIZATION AND IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

This article examines how substance abuse treatment provides a preprofessional socialization context that significantly contributes to the reproduction of its counseling professionals. Most of the literature on professional socialization argues that recruitment, professional commitment, and the adoption of a professional identity occur after students are in training. By contrast, this article suggests that preprofessional socialization recruits, generates professional commitment, and aids in the adoption of a professional identity prior to standardized counselor training and education. Preprofessional socialization subsequently affects students' academic experiences by providing an ideological framework which allows them to integrate and censor the information that is imparted by instructors. Building on Merton's notion of “anticipatory socialization,” the author argues that preprofessional socialization resequences, in time, some of the fundamental assumptions of the professional socialization process. Drawing on data gathered through introspection and open-ended interviews with 35 professional “ex”s currently employed in a variety of community, state, and private institutions providing treatment to individuals with drug, alcohol, and/or eating disorder problems, this article explicates the central contours of this preprofessional socialization.