Counseling Across Cultures

Paul B. Pedersen, Walter J. Lonner, Juris G. Draguns, Joseph E. Trimble, Maria R. Scharrón-del Río

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781483321684
• Edition: 7
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

• The book is edited by pioneers in the field who helped found the multicultural movement in the 1980s.
• A useful five-part, 24-chapter format provides balanced coverage.
• Broad coverage explores a wide range of topics, from spirituality in counseling across cultures to culturally appropriate counseling interventions with diverse client populations.
• Critical Incidents (expanded cases) offer students the opportunity to analyze and think critically about a variety of cultural situations.

Part I Essential Components of Cross-Cultural Counseling

A quick look at the table of contents of this text reveals that almost 80% of the chapters—the 20 chapters that make up Parts II through V—focus on specifically targeted perspectives and topics that are systematically spread across important clusters of interrelated chapters. Thus, the operative phrase that they share is specificity of function. All of these 20 chapters feature topics that can, if one desires, be read as unified independent presentations. For instance, if a counselor wishes to review key aspects of counseling Asian clients, or refugees, or issues pertaining to families, specific chapters can serve as informative packages in and of themselves. The operative phrase in Part I, in contrast, is foundational perspectives. The intent of this beginning group of four chapters is to provide a broader view that will help form a coherent basis for the rest of the text. We strongly believe that all approaches used in cross-cultural counseling are best implemented when important generic areas, fundamentally related to all other counseling-oriented topics, are woven into the fabric of counselors’ specific purposes. In that sense, Part I has an integrative function for the text. We recommend reading it first. In this introduction we present only fragmentary comments on the four chapters.

Chapter 1 focuses on inclusive cultural empathy, or ICE. Empathy, like related concepts such as sympathy and compassion, is a human universal. It has almost certainly been part of the collective human psyche across countless millennia. A temporary state of emotional symbiosis seems to characterize empathy. One has only to study Rembrandt’s 17th-century masterpiece The Return of the Prodigal Son to see and even feel that acts of empathy, compassion, and sympathy predate the introduction of the root German word Einfühlung, which means “in-feeling” or “feeling in.” It was first used more than a century ago in the psychology of aesthetics. Robert Vischer and then Theodor Lipps introduced it as an interpersonal phenomenon. Freud and others employed the term extensively. Thus it is useless to argue whether or not we have the capacity for empathy. Rather, the question is, To what extent do we have it? That leads to other questions, such as Can it be enhanced by experience and training? and Is too much of this “feeling in” dangerous in counseling relationships?

Culture-oriented perspectives in psychology are currently popular and inclusive, and we believe they will remain that way. Whether it is cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, indigenous psychology, psychological anthropology, or multiculturalism, psychology has become much more inclusive. Gone are the hegemonic days of Western-based psychology that largely ignored the phenomenon of culture and its multitude of forms. “Leave culture in the hands of anthropologists” was a frequent directive issued by orthodox behaviorists. That narrow vision has almost entirely disappeared. Many of the basic principles of psychology remain, as well they should, because psychology is an important academic and practical discipline with transcendent conceptual and methodological principles. Organized cross-cultural psychology, one of the antidotes to scholarly myopia, is now half a century old, with new developments certain to continue. (For a chronological overview of initiatives that have been heavily influenced by culture-oriented psychologists, see Lonner, 2013.) Inclusive cultural empathy is a concept that stands on the shoulders of these efforts. ICE is such a compelling idea that it serves as the hub for the several spokes that constitute the remaining chapters in this text. In Chapter 1, Paul B. Pedersen and Mark Pope take the experience of empathy, with its roots in Western conceptualizations of self, values, and other popular constructs that make up personhood, to a level made possible by the contributions of thousands of psychologists and counselors throughout the world.

Pedersen and Pope note that “inclusion” comes from research in the hard sciences, where something “can be both right and wrong, good and bad, true and false at the same time through ‘both/and’ thinking.” This supplants the rules of “exclusion,” which, as they point out, have depended on “either/or” thinking, wherein one alternative explanation is entirely excluded and its opposite is entirely accepted. Thus, “from this quantum perspective, empathy is both a pattern and a process at the same time.” It is elegantly clear, therefore, that in counseling across cultures, taking both the perspective of the counselor and that of the client, much more can be gained by adopting a two-way attitude than by accepting a traditional “either/or” perspective. Psychotherapy is not a laboratory experiment in which a null hypothesis is either accepted or rejected. This dichotomy would mean that accepting one perspective (usually the counselor’s) over the other would block progress. No doubt thousands of counseling sessions have ended abruptly when one in the dyad (usually the counselor) looked at the problem through culture-colored glasses. It was out of these procedural concerns that Pedersen developed his well-known triad training model. ICE is also central to Pedersen’s idea that multiculturalism is a “fourth force” in psychotherapy and, as such, is as influential as behaviorism, humanism, and psychodynamic approaches. These pioneering viewpoints are briefly discussed in Chapter 1.

The intent of Chapter 2 is to examine the basic elements of counseling and to explain how counseling in any cultural setting can be effective. In the chapter, Juris G. Draguns gives examples of classic definitions of counseling, all of which can readily be applied to counseling across cultures. The idea that “counseling is principally concerned with facilitating, rather than more directively bringing about, adaptive coping in order to alleviate distress, eliminate dysfunction, and promote effective problem solving and optimal decision making” is sufficiently transcendent to be used in any relationship that can be described as “counseling.” An additional comment Draguns makes, that “counseling proceeds between two (or sometimes more than two) individuals and is embedded in distinctive sociocultural milieus,” correct as it is, must be considered in connection with ICE, for two, and not just one, cultural milieus will inevitably be involved. This is the sauce that gives meaning to the notion of “cross” in cross-cultural counseling, for these relationships cut both ways.

Draguns gives cogent examples of what Pedersen has told us: that a multitude of “culture teachers” have strongly influenced, and continue to influence, all culture-oriented counselors. Like homunculi sitting on a counselor’s shoulder during counseling sessions, these teachers affect what is said and done in each and every encounter. This analogy is in line with the broad sweep of ICE. The more influence these teachers have in a counseling session, the more likely it is they will contribute to a successful outcome. Another consideration of empathy is that it works best if understood as a constantly reciprocating relationship. The counselor will have to be attuned to the many ways that the client has learned his or her own culture, and the client will have to pay attention to what the counselor says and does, for just as the counselor has “culture teachers,” so does the client. This is part of what the therapeutic alliance is all about.

Chapter 2 also covers a range of other considerations that to varying degrees cut across all the other chapters in the text. Culturally adapted cognitive-behavioral therapy and its possible convergence with evidence-based treatments have entered culture-oriented counseling. The issues surrounding this convergence are discussed. The latter part of the chapter shifts from the nature of cross-cultural counseling as a process that differs from “routine” counseling to several generalizable characteristics of clients. While it is true that each individual is unique, there are certain domains of personhood that transcend culture and ethnicity. Foremost among these domains is the construct of self. Consistent with aspects of self that are important in assessing persons (see the discussion below regarding Chapter 3), in culture-oriented counseling it is important to keep in mind that the nature of a client’s self is largely shaped by cultural and ethnic factors that leave their indelible imprints on everyone. The most widely researched aspect of the self places all of us on a continuum. On one end we find those who are highly independent and autonomous in thought and action (think of the stereotypic strong male, or of the notion of self-sufficiency). The other end is populated by individuals whose selves are conditioned by a strong sense of belonging to some sort of collectivity, such as a caste, clan, family, or other group (think of the stereotypic female, for whom family, friends, and community come first). The continuum of allocentrism–idiocentrism—or group orientation as opposed to self-reliance—has been used as another way to view opposing configurations of personality traits that help explain how individuals differ. Highly related to this useful concept is the dichotomy of individualism and collectivism. A number of culture-oriented psychological researchers have spent most of their careers studying the roots and dynamics of this hypothetical continuum, which is mostly used at a high level of abstraction, such as a clan or an entire country. It is such a robust construct that one can envision it as being highly related to the bifurcation of extroversion and introversion, an oft-used dichotomy that operates at the level of the individual. Draguns also discusses four other dimensions that Hofstede and a large network of fellow researchers have used in hundreds of research projects. He closes the chapter by discussing universal, cultural, and individual threads in counseling. He also includes a helpful list of brief “dos and don’ts” that can help guide counselors in their interactions with clients whose cultural or ethnic backgrounds differ from their own.

Chapter 3 gives an overview of issues, problems, and perspectives in the area of psychological assessment. The assessment or appraisal of a person who, for any reason, becomes a counseling client begins the instant that counselor and client meet. The assessment can be quick and impressionistic, involving no formal assessment procedures. On the other hand, it can, and usually does, involve an array of psychological tests and other measurement devices and procedures that help the counselor understand the client’s abilities, personality, values, and virtually any other dimension of personhood that the counselor deems important. Perhaps the key question to be asked and answered is the one that the author of the chapter, Walter J. Lonner, proposes: Is the assessment of this person, in these circumstances, with these methods, and at this time as complete and accurate as possible?

The field of psychological measurement and testing has a rich and lengthy history, and it is one of the more ubiquitous areas in the discipline. Lord Kelvin once made a claim that cements the importance of tests and measurements: “If you haven’t measured it you don’t know what you are talking about.” Years later, E. L. Thorndike backed him up with this well-known proclamation: “If a thing exists, it exists in some amount; and if it exists in some amount, it can be measured.” Thus, one dimension in assessment—and arguably the most important in the area of professional counseling—involves carefully planned psychological testing. All counseling clients, regardless of presenting problems and the focus of counseling, are assessed in some fashion, and many of them will be required or asked to take one or more psychological tests. Tests that measure aptitude, abilities, intelligence, personality, interests, values, and other aspects of the person are most common. Most of these psychometric devices originated in the United States, Canada, and their territorial extensions, such as Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe. Furthermore, most of them were originally conceived by academic psychologists and educational experts who represent a fairly narrow swath of vast populations and normed on “captive audiences” or “samples of convenience.” And therein lies a question that begs an answer in almost any counseling encounter with people for whom the tests may not have been originally normed: What must be done to ensure that the test results are equivalent and unbiased? The ideas of fairness and cultural validity are pervasively on the minds of cross-cultural psychologists, whose careers have been dedicated to the assessment of various dimensions of personhood. As Lonner points out, numerous technical resources are readily available in the literature to help therapists translate and otherwise adapt psychological tests for use in counseling.

Counselors can choose between quantitative (nomothetic) and qualitative (idiographic) methods in assessment or use some combination of the two. Because both of these approaches have attractive features, the use of mixed methods is steadily increasing, especially in counseling and clinical work. Neuropsychological testing, briefly surveyed in Chapter 3, is often important in the assessment of acculturating or displaced individuals who have been victims of wars, physical or psychological abuse, malnutrition, or other horrid human conditions.

The overriding theme of inclusive cultural empathy that characterizes this book can be extended to inclusivity in empathetic assessment. For this reason, Lonner suggests the use of knowledge-based assessment (KBA). Usually having nothing to do with more traditional and formal assessment devices, KBA includes the knowledge that the counselor has accumulated in all walks of life and especially from reading and becoming familiar with culture-oriented research that, for years, has focused on hypothesized universal personality traits and the ways in which culture helps to shape various dimensions of self as well as values. A client’s personality, conceptions of self, and preferences for certain values over others will always be among the mixture of things that emerge in the process of counseling. The counselor’s ability to use the results of a great deal of culture-driven research in such areas of personhood extends the notion of psychological assessment beyond its more formal and traditional techniques.

Counseling across cultures as a recognized professional activity has a lengthy history but a short past. One can imagine thousands of scenarios in the distant past where a person from, for example, Homer, Alaska, was discussing a personal problem presented by an immigrant from rural Norway. The counselor may have little or no psychological background, and both the counselor and the client may have limited fluency in the other’s language. These kinds of conundrums take us back a few pages in this introduction to our brief discussion of assessment across cultures. Thus, in this hypothetical context, one can ask: Is my counseling of th...