Becoming a Multiculturally Competent Counselor

Changming Duan, Chris Brown

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781483322445
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Organized around the latest CACREP Standards, this timely book covers the core concepts, theories, and skills of multicultural and social justice counseling. With a focus on helping readers develop their multicultural professional identities, the authors conceptualize multicultural identity development as the foundation for comprehending the pervasive impact of social privilege and oppression and developing competencies to effectively work with the culturally diverse. Case illustrations, exercises, and an emphasis on reflective practice foster a true understanding and application of concepts.

Becoming a Multiculturally Competent Counselor is part of the SAGE Counseling and Professional Identity Series, which targets specific competencies identified by CACREP (Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs). To learn more about each text in the series, please visit www.sagepub.com/cpiseries.

Section 1 Professional Counseling: A Cultural Occurrence

Major CACREP Standards for the Section

CACREP Standard 2a: Social and Cultural Diversity—multicultural and pluralistic trends, including characteristics and concerns between and within diverse groups nationally and internationally

CACREP Standard 2b: attitudes, beliefs, understandings, and acculturative experiences, including specific experiential learning activities designed to foster students’ understanding of self and culturally diverse clients

Specific Competencies Identified by CACREP Diversity and Advocacy Standards for Clinical Mental Health Counseling Addressed in Section 1

CACREP Knowledge 1: Understands how living in a multicultural society affects clients who are seeking clinical mental health counseling services

CACREP Knowledge 2: Understands the effects of racism, discrimination, sexism, power, privilege, and oppression on one’s own life and career and those of the client

After Reading Section 1, Students Will Be Able to Do the Following:

1. Recognize the monocultural nature of extant counseling theories and practices (Chapter 1)
2. Understand the necessity for counselors in the 21st century to develop a multicultural professional identity (Chapter 1)
3. Understand how the counseling profession has historically failed in providing culturally just and fair services to the socially oppressed and the culturally diverse (Chapter 2)
4. Understand the negative impact of racism, discrimination, sexism, power, privilege, and oppression on many individuals in our society and on counseling practice (Chapter 2)
5. Be knowledgeable of the multicultural movements and advances in the counseling profession in recent years (Chapter 3)
6. Recognize the demand and need for the counseling profession to transform itself in order to effectively serve the socially oppressed and culturally diverse (Chapter 3)

Section Introduction

This section is devoted to helping students understand the monocultural nature of professional counseling, the demand for a multiculturally effective counseling profession in the United States and globally, and the profession’s efforts concerning greater inclusivity and respect for cultural diversity. The overarching goal is to help counselors-in-training embrace a personal, social, and professional responsibility toward developing a multicultural professional identity, which will provide the foundation for practicing as a multiculturally competent counselor.

In Chapter 1, we describe the ways in which the counseling profession reflects ethnocentric views of psychological health and helping. In theories and in practice, the cultural values and worldviews of the dominant cultural groups are the bases and foundations while communication styles of the European middle class are the vehicles of counseling.

Chapter 2 provides a description of the demands for multicultural counseling from several angles. Due to the presence of social oppression, increasing demographic changes in the United States, and ongoing globalization, there is a high demand for a multiculturally efficacious counseling profession.

Chapter 3 outlines the progress of the recent multicultural movement and its future direction. It is clear that continuing to practice monocultural counseling will not only be unhelpful to the culturally diverse, but it will also perpetuate the damaging social injustices that have existed in U.S. history.

We hope that our attention to the historical and monocultural context of counseling and the recent multicultural movement will encourage counselors-in-training to develop multicultural competencies.

1 Monocultural Context of Counseling as a Helping Profession

Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.

—West African Proverb

Chapter Overview

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of the monocultural context of the counseling profession by describing the values and worldviews reflected in the counseling profession with particular attention to our extant counseling theories and mode of practice. We also discuss our ethical obligations to understand client problems in a cultural context and provide understanding for the need to develop a multicultural professional identity.

Self-Assessment of Pre-Existing Awareness and Knowledge

• What is my understanding of the cultural foundation of the counseling profession?
• What are the values of the counseling profession that are consistent or inconsistent with my own?
• How do I perceive people who are racially, ethically, socially, or culturally different from me?
• What thoughts do I have about the multicultural movement in the field of counseling?
• In what way am I prepared (or not prepared) to emotionally and intellectually engage in the helping relationship with clients from socially oppressed and marginalized groups (e.g., lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender clients)?
• What challenges might I encounter in trying to develop a multicultural professional identity?
• How might I demonstrate my commitment to developing a multicultural consciousness?

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, students will be able to do the following:

1. Recognize the counseling profession as a culture-laden practice
2. Describe the cultural values and worldviews on which extant counseling theories are based
3. Understand why it is unprofessional, nontherapeutic, and unethical to practice counseling without considering clients’ cultural contexts
4. Self-assess their interest and motivation for intellectual and emotional engagement in multicultural learning
5. Understand the necessity of developing a multicultural professional identity and multicultural competencies

Case Illustration 1.1

The Case of Xilin

Xilin is a 49-year-old Asian American female who emigrated from China when she was 14 years old. She received high school, college, and graduate education in computer science in the United States and has worked for a major telephone company since receiving her master’s degree. She sought counseling from a White, middle-aged, experienced female counselor (Dr. T.) after having some “major conflicts” related to disciplining their only teenage daughter with her husband, a successful information technology professional. After six counseling sessions, Xilin separated from her husband and moved out with their daughter. She initiated termination after the seventh session, reporting, “I think I am doing fine.”

About eight months later (by then she and their daughter had moved back in with her husband), Xilin ran into the first author of this book (Changming Duan, an Asian American counseling psychologist) and shared her counseling experience with Dr. T. She said that initially she felt the counseling was very helpful because Dr. T. helped her get in touch with her feelings, which included her sadness about having conflicts with her husband of 25 years and anger about him not letting her discipline their daughter in a way she saw fit. However, in retrospective, she said although it was all her own fault, she was “very mad” at Dr. T. because she led her to focus on her anger toward her husband “almost exclusively” by spending a lot of time talking about her anger in sessions. She said that she did not remember having much discussion about disciplining their daughter or helping her husband understand her thoughts and parenting style, which was the original reason that she sought counseling.

Xilin said she felt “stupid” when Dr. T. pointed out the lack of an egalitarian relationship in her marriage because she never thought about it. She said that talking about her anger toward her husband session after session led her to experience increased anger toward him, to the point which she “realized” that he never respected her as a person and his dominance compromised her independence and autonomy. She said she remembered feeling very resentful that her husband had treated her, a competent professional, as “a person without her own mind and like a docile housewife.” She recalled feeling embarrassed for not being emotionally independent. To pursue her independence, she separated from her husband.

Xilin reported that moving out had started her regrettable “curved road.” She said that following several weeks of being on her own, she experienced more and more sadness and noticed changes in her relationships with their daughter and her social network at her church. Their daughter became increasingly defiant toward her and would say and do hurtful things to her, especially blaming her for her dad’s stroke and subsequent declining health. The unsupportive looks and com...