Asian Perspectives in Counselling and Psychotherapy

Pittu Laungani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415233002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134570461
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Asian Perspectives in Counselling and Psychotherapy considers what exactly cross-cultural counselling and psychotherapy mean. Topics covered include:

* a detailed analysis of the concept of culture, and the relationship between culture and therapy
* a comparative study of Western cultures and Eastern cultures
* the historical development of counselling and psychotherapy in Western countries
* the controversies related to the problem of 'matching' clients with therapists.

Illustrated by stimulating case studies, the theoretical knowledge and practical advice presented in Asian Perspectives in Counselling and Psychotherapy will be invaluable reading to all practising and training counsellors and psychotherapists.

Chapter 1
Understanding culture: its influence on counselling and therapy

Introduction

In 1932, Mahatma Gandhi came to England to attend the Second Round Table Conference in London. The purpose of the visit was to discuss with the British government the issue of Indian independence. His presence, partly because of the simple clothes he wore, partly because of his seeming frailty, and partly because of the ‘halo’ of saintliness which the Indians had imbued him with, aroused a great deal of interest and curiosity. Several journalists accosted him, each jostling for an exclusive interview. One of the journalists asked him what seemed an interesting question.

‘Mr Gandhi,’ asked the journalist, ‘what do you think of British culture? ’

With a twinkle in his eye, an impish smile lighting up his face, Gandhi answered: ‘I think it is a wonderful idea! ’

It is possible that Mr Gandhi’s reply is apocryphal. But it has entered the legends of Indo-British history. Gandhi’s answer, uttered no doubt in a mood of levity, was cryptic, sardonic, moralistic and even judgemental.

There are several important points that can be raised from this brief encounter. What did the journalist mean by the word ‘culture’? What did Gandhi understand by the word culture? Were the meanings of the term mutually shared? In describing British culture as a wonderful idea, was Gandhi merely teasing the journalist? Or was he actually adopting a superior moral stance, which carries the implication that what the British might refer to as culture is not what Indians would call culture? Did Gandhi’s reference to British culture as an abstraction (translatable into reality) carry within it the unvoiced judgement that conquerors, whoever they might be, whatever period of history they may emerge from, by their very actions cannot be said to be a cultured group of people?

Can one speculate on the motives of the journalist who asked the question? Was he seeking approbation? Or was he attempting to extol in a subtle (and yet not-so-subtle) way what might have seemed to him the self-evident virtue of British culture? Alas, we shall never know.

Since further speculation may lead to some elucidation, allow me to ask you the same question. What does the term ‘culture’ mean to you? How would you define culture? Would you try and define it with reference to yourself, the kind of person you are, your family background,the country in which you were born, and so on? Or would you try and define it in abstract terms? Or both?

A few years ago I put similar questions to my undergraduate students at the university. They had elected to do a course in cross-cultural psychology and seemed the most appropriate group to which I could put such questions. Their answers surprised me. Most of them answered with reference to themselves: they said they were white and British. Most of the non-white students were second-generation, and a few even third, and they described themselves as being black British, or Asian. Only a few chose to describe themselvesin terms of their ancestral origins. They defined culture as being with people of their own kind. They spoke of people who shared their interests and values, their preferences in food, music, books and sports, who spoke their own language, who were of the same religion as they; people who understood them, accepted them for what they were and in whose company they felt comfortable, safe, wanted, loved and could ‘let their guards down’. Hardly any of them chose to explain the concept of culture in abstract terms.

Subsequently, I extended my enquiries to other groups of students; their answers were very similar to the ones given by the first group. There were hardly any differences in their responses. Even from this cursory ‘survey’ it became clear that the term ‘culture’ holds a variety of meanings for people: nationality, skin colour, country of birth, religion, a shared language, patterns of relationships, acceptance, warmth etc. A few were critical of what they saw as the dominant values of British society, which they felt unable to identify with and wanted changed. There was among them a small group of feminists who were critical of the patriarchal values of western societyas a whole and felt that subscribing to such values undermined their own identity.

Last year, I was able to extend this form of enquiry to a few groups of students in Bombay, where I had been invited to give a set of lectures. I was surprised by their answers. The students in London saw themselves initially in terms of their inherited or acquired nationalities – black British, white British, Irish etc. and from there they moved on to other specifics, such as religion, country of ancestral origin, region, language etc. But the students in Bombay operated on an inverse set of parameters. They defined themselves largely in terms of their religious and caste-related denominations, (e.g. ‘I am a Saraswat Brahmin’, ‘I am a Sunni Muslim’, ‘I am a Gujarati bania [of the Vaishya caste – see Chapter 3]’, ‘I am a Marwari Jain’). And then in a descending order, they identified themselves in terms of their sub-caste, their family, their region, and finally their nationality. Thus, while the students in London moved from the general to the particular, the students in India moved from the particular to the general. It was obvious that they were more concerned about emphasizing their caste and hierarchical differences than talking about their national similarities. Although one would be loath to call this form of enquiry a robust empirical study, similar findings have been corroborated by several sociologists, including Bougle (1992) and Gupta (1992, 2000).

Popular conceptions of culture

Many people construe the word ‘culture’ from their own, subjective, idiosyncratic, individual perspectives. Sometimes, the generic term ‘culture’ is confused with the idea of a cultured person. Persons subscribing to an ‘elitist’ view of culture may talk about a cultured person and may come to define culture in terms of desirable qualities possessed by an individual. They would see a cultured person as being well behaved, considerate, sensitive, sophisticated, tactful, perhaps even a classicist, with impeccable manners. An uncultured person, on the other hand, would be seen as being uncouth, ill mannered, coarse, ignorant, bigoted and uneducated. If the desirable qualities are possessed by a large group of people, they are then said to be a cultured people, and the society in which they live is said to be a cultured society. Thus, education, manners, learning and one’s bearing come to be equated with the term ‘culture’. Then there are those who refer to culture as highbrow and lowbrow, superior and inferior, advanced and developing, scientific and superstitious. But such definitions, because of the implicit value judgements contained in them, may become unprofitable digressions.

The word ‘culture’ becomes even more difficult to grasp when it is prefixed by other words, such as agriculture, bioculture, horticulture, or when a microbiologist studies and examines cultures. Although in this instance the word ‘culture’ carries a specific occupation-centred or profession-centred meaning, its usefulness as far as our own interests are concerned is limited.

At a common-sense level, culture may also be seen in historical terms, as a historically created system of beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviours of people enjoined by a common language and religion, and occupying a given geographical territory or region. These factors allow individuals living in that society to structure their lives in accordance with the sets of established norms of that society. They also allow them to regulate their individual and collective lives.

The term ‘culture’, like many such global terms (e.g. intelligence, personality, consciousness, creativity etc.), is best understood as an umbrella term, which covers a variety of meanings and perspectives.Little purpose will be served in attempting to examine all the different nuances, meanings and perspectives attached to the term. Let us therefore restrict ourselves to understanding culture from the following three perspectives:

• subjective;
• academic;
• postmodern.

A brief discussion of the above perspectives will hopefully help us to understand, analyse and sift through the difficulties involved in coming to terms with the nebulous concept of culture. Let us turn to the first one.

Subjective perspectives

In our own, private, personal, subjective way, we all know what we mean by culture. We are each born into a particular family, which has a history of its own. Through the process of socialization we learn (hopefully) to imbibe and internalize the language, the rites and rituals, religion and religious practices, rules, habits and customs, beliefs, attitudes and values, and patterns of appropriate conduct which our family members (and other members of the community) endeavour to inculcate in us. The lessons we learn are generally in accordance with the norms prevalent in our wider society and the extent to which parents express a willingness (and are able) to influence them. We learn to tell the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, appropriate and inappropriate, acceptable and unacceptable, secular and sacred etc.

A family is a microcosm of a wider section of our community, which in turn is a microcosm of the society in which we live and grow up. Society provides us with a structure which regulates our lives, our beliefs and practices, and we are able to make sense of ourselves, of our own lives, of others, and of the world around us. We tend to see society in tangible terms because it consists of groups of people who also occupy a given territory and live together. We also notice, even within our own society, variations in people: skin colour, language, dietary practices, patterns of worship, social interactions and relationships, and even climatic and other ecological variations. As we learn to make sense of our society we notice that the differencesalso extend into political, social, economic, physical and other environmental domains. Despite this, we tend to experience a sense of belongingness, a feeling of ‘oneness’ among the diverse groups around us. This occurs when we come to understand that all the diverse groups in our society are united by a set of core values – religious, aesthetic, political, legal, nationalistic, social – which form an integral part of our culture.

If perchance we move away from our own culture into another culture (e.g. through migration, education, political asylum etc.), what comes as a huge shock (culture shock) to us are the vast differences which separate us from the people of that culture. Everything seems different, strange and alien: the people, their mode of dress, their mannerisms, their accents, their colloquialisms, their buildings, their food, their climate, their rules, their norms etc. The entire pattern of life appears bewildering, even quite intimidating. We lose our bearings; the familiar reference points, which we took for granted in our own culture, lose their meaning. We feel intimidatedat the idea of having to start all over again, to learn afresh the new patterns of life which would allow us to make sense of the new culture, eventually becoming part of it. We become aware – sometimes quite painfully – of the powerful impact which culture exercises in shaping our personality and our view of the world. We are as though chained to our culture. Our condition is like those of the chained prisoners described by Plato in the Republic (Book VII). All that the prisoners could see were blurs and shadows, all they could hear were echoes, mistaking appearance for reality. We too, when we migrate to another culture, tend often to feel that way. And so long as we remain chained to our own culture and immobile, we are unlikely to acquire any deep understanding of the adopted culture.
Any knowledge that we gain en passant is likely to be superficial, stereotypic and irrelevant.

Does one ever succeed in breaking out of the chains of one’s own culture? Whether we succeed in achieving an understanding of the adopted culture and accepting (or rejecting) its dominant values is related to a variety of factors. They include the age at which one migrated to another culture, one’s level of education, one’s occupation,one’s area of residence and the kinds of experiences one has in the course of living in the adopted culture. We also come to feel that in the process of trying to make sense of the new culture, we may not be able reconcile the conflicting cultural values which impinge upon us, and might lose sight of and even abandon the values of our own culture.

Academic perspectives

Here we shall confine our discussion to three major perspectives, which are: anthropological; sociological; and psychological.

Anthropological perspectives

The study of cultures has been of interest to anthropologists (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952; Leach 1964; Murdock 1964; Tyler 1969; Geertz 1973) to sociologists (Shweder and Sullivan 1993) and more recently to cross-cultural psychologists (White 1947; Whiting 1964; Triandis 1972, 1994; Kakar [1979] 1992; Brislin 1983, 1990; Barnlund and Araki 1985; Roland 1988; Berry et al. 1992; Smith and Bond 1993; Laungani 1996, 2000c, 2001d; Segall et al. 1999). Anthropologists were the early pioneers in their studies of cultures. Their early writings were speculative, naïve and even quite absurd (Harris 1968). Early anthropology, as Bock (1980), Harris (1968) and several others have pointed out, was also blatantly racist in its formulations (see Rivers 1901; Woodworth 1910; Bartlett 1923, 1937). Differences between Negroes (as they were referred to then) and Europeans were often explained in terms of naïve and ill-founded theories. Non-European and non-white societies were judged as being backward, primitive and inferior. White, western societies were seen as being enlightened and superior.

It was not until the early twentieth century that anthropology began to acquire academic respectability. Following the lead of Franz Boaz (1911), anthropologists started to undertake ethnographicfield studies. Starting with the pioneering investigations of Malinowski among the Trobriand Islanders in the South Pacific (1927), other field studies were also undertaken. To the anthropologists,culture includes the ‘total attainments and activities of any specific period and group of humans’ (Triandis 1980: 1). Culture therefore is best seen as an abstract concept, an overarching symbolic configuration, created by the people in society. It incorporates within it all the distinctive human forms of adaptation and the distinctive ways in which different human populations arrange and organize their lives on earth (Levine 1973). It regulates and lends legitimacy to the relationships and the practices of members of society. All cultures are symbiotically related to their societies. Although the two are not identical, one cannot conceive of a society without culture, nor culture without some society (Carrithers 1992; Parekh 2000). Cultures evolve, grow, change, and in some cases wane, and may even die and become extinct (e.g. the ancient Hellenic culture).

Thus each culture is seen as having a structure and a pattern.
And each part of the pattern includes beliefs, attitudes, values, rules, laws, symbols, rites, rituals, taboos, patterns and networks of communication,etc. The study of whole societies has been the main concern of anthropologists. In their concern to describe a system, they often chose to adopt a relativistic position. Conceptually and methodologically their discipline is more allied to psychiatry and psychoanalysis than to psychology (Klineberg 1980; Jahoda and Krewer 1997). But with increasing collaboration the dividing lines separating disciplines have blurred and in recent years new specialist areas such as psychological anthropology, cognitive anthropology, cultural psychology and so on have emerged (Munroe and Munroe 1980).

Sociological perspectives

To sociologists, culture is best seen as ‘that complex whole, which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, law, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’ (Taylor 1989). The attributes of culture are that it is shared by all, learned and transmitted, not inherited, constantly being created and recreated, undergoing change and providing knowledge and techniques of survival.Culture also...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Understanding culture: its influence on counselling and therapy
• Chapter 2 Asians in Britain: historical and intergenerational perspectives
• Chapter 3 Cross-cultural differences in eastern and western cultures: a conceptual model
• Chapter 4 Western models of counselling and therapy: historical and contemporary perspectives
• Chapter 5 When therapists and clients meet: Asian and western perspectives
• Chapter 6 Asian models of counselling and therapy: historical and contemporary perspectives
• Chapter 7 A meeting of cultures? ‘Matching’ clients and therapists
• Chapter 8 Case studies
• Chapter 9 The summing up
• References