Counseling the Culturally Diverse. Laura Smith L.
should not be taken to indicate that all persons coming from any cultural group will share all or even some of the same traits. We know that clients come from families who embody a multifaceted array of perspectives that range from strict preservation of their cultural heritage to active integration with mainstream culture to a combination of both (Atkin & Yoo, 2021). Generalizations are helpful tools for learning and analysis; however, they are guidelines to be tentatively applied in new situations, and they should be open to change and challenge. Accordingly the information provided in this chapter (and throughout the book) should be seen as guidelines rather than absolutes—these generalizations can serve as the background from which distinct individuals emerge.
IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE
1 Become cognizant of the generic characteristics of counseling and psychotherapy: culture‐bound values, class‐bound values, and linguistic factors.
2 Learn to stop and consider how your conventional therapeutic training, with its deeply embedded European American cultural assumptions, can lead you to misinterpret the views, values, and behaviors of clients of diverse racial, ethnic, and social class backgrounds.
3 Realize that the problems and concerns of many clients of color are related to systemic and external forces rather than to internal psychological problems (Chavez, Fernandez, Hipolito‐Delgado, & Rivera, 2016).
4 Know that our nation's increasing diversity means that psychotherapists must broader their cultural conceptions of the family with the understanding that one is not superior to another.
5 Realize that no family can be understood apart from the cultural, social, and political dimensions of their functioning. The traditional definition of the nuclear family as consisting of two heterosexual parents in a long‐term marriage, raising their biological children, and having the father as primary wage earner refers to a statistical minority of people.
6 Know that the United States is increasingly becoming a multilingual nation and that the linguistic demands of clinical work may place some populations at a disadvantage.
7 Consider the need to provide community counseling services that reach out to diverse cultural and social class communities.
8 Learning about cultural characteristics is important, and so is the need not to overgeneralize or stereotype. Familiarizing ourselves with general and/or traditional group characteristics is different from rigidly applying preconceived notions.
Microtraining Series Video: Overcoming Barriers to Effective Multicultural Counseling and Therapy
SUMMARY
Theories of counseling and psychotherapy are influenced by assumptions that theorists make regarding the goals for therapy, the method used to invoke change, and the definition of mental health and illness. These assumptions are often rooted in culture‐ and class‐bound perspectives that can be so taken for granted by conventionally‐trained therapists that they are not even noticed. Counseling and psychotherapy have traditionally been conceptualized in Western individualistic terms that may lead to premature termination of counseling and underutilization of mental health services by marginalized groups in our society. Other culture‐bound values that may prove antagonistic to members of diverse groups include the following: focus on the individual, verbal/emotional/behavioral expressiveness, insight orientation, self‐disclosure, scientific empiricism, and separation of mental and physical functioning.
Culture‐related communication barriers are among the most relevant of these pitfalls for counselors, given that verbal communication is the basic vehicle by which counseling and therapy take place. When the counseling style of the counselor does not match the communication style of his or her culturally diverse clients, many difficulties may arise, including premature termination of the session, inability to establish rapport, and cultural oppression of the client. It is clear that effective multicultural counseling occurs when the counselor and the client are able to send and receive both verbal and nonverbal messages appropriately and accurately. Proxemics, kinesics, paralanguage, and other nonverbal factors are important elements of communication, and may be highly culture‐bound; effective mental health professionals understand these factors and shift are flexible in their helping styles.
In addition to this category, both class‐bound values and linguistic factors may prove biased against diverse client groups. For the therapist who comes from a middle‐ to upper‐class background, it is often difficult to relate to the circumstances affecting the client who lives in poverty. The phenomenon of poverty and its effects on individuals and institutions can be devastating. The lack of bilingual therapists and the requirement that clients communicate in Standard English may also limit progress in counseling and therapy. If bilingual individuals do not use their native tongue, many aspects of their emotional experience may not be available for treatment.
Family systems theory, while seemingly consistent with the collectivistic orientation of many diverse groups, may be equally culture‐bound, as may be manifested in marital or couple counseling, parent–child counseling, or work with more than one member of a family. For example, many Western beliefs and assumptions about healthy families may be incongruent with diverse groups, including: (a) placing a high premium on the free and open expression of emotion; (b) encouraging family members to prioritize their own unique selves above the family; (c) striving for an equal division of labor and authority among family members; and (d) holding the nuclear family as the standard.
Life in poverty also reflects a set of experiences that corresponds to a particular cultural standpoint—and it is one that many psychotherapists will be ill‐equipped to understand beyond their feelings of sympathy. Not only are poverty and classism overwhelmingly detrimental to the mental and physical health of clients, they are associated with a set of unintentional class biases that are known to affect helping professionals as well as the general public. Unless therapists work to identify and address their poverty‐related awareness, knowledge, and skills, their unaware classism will undermine their ability to work with lower‐socioeconomic‐class clients.
Full Counseling Session Analysis video (Part II) for “Barriers to Effective Multicultural Counseling”
Full Counseling Session Analysis video (Part II) for “Communication Styles and Counseling”
GLOSSARY TERMS