Counseling And Psychotherapy Research Paper

In many regards, scholars, educators, and practitioners have been focusing upon changing population demographics as a driving force necessitating multicultural inclusion. For example, the US Bureau of the Census data (1990) has shown significant increases in the number of Blacks, American Indians, Asian Pacific Islanders, and Latinos. Between 1970 and 1990, the Latino population increased 145 percent, the Asian Pacific Islander population by 375 percent with 22.3 million Latinos and 7.2 million Asian Pacific Islanders now living in the USA. Currently one in three US Americans has been either born outside of the US or are members of visible racial-cultural groups. Given the present rate of immigration as well as fertility rates, researchers at the Bureau of Immigration have predicted by the year 2040 Whites will only comprise 62 percent of the total US population.

Recognizing the importance of meeting the needs for all seeking mental health services, scholars and educators have developed competency guidelines and ethical mandates for integrating multicultural perspectives into psychology research, practice, and training (American Psychological Association 1991, Sue et al. 1982, 1992, 1998), educational programs (Carter 1995, Ridley et al. 1994), and evaluation instruments (Pope-Davis and Dings 1995).

2. Culture

What is culture? Culture at its core understands human behavior through causes and effects and/or content and processes. While cultural content is focused on knowledge about learned and acquired beliefs, art, morals, customs, and habits, cultural processes attend to the process and perpetuation of pattern transmission. Thus, psychosocial cultural perspectives are socially transmitted attitudes and behaviors emerging from interpersonal interactions transmitted generationally, not through biological inheritance but by formal and informal methods of teaching and demonstration. Thus, culture can include historical dimensions emphasizing traditions, normative dimensions focusing upon unique and shared experiences, psychological dimensions including adjustment, learning and group behaviors, structural dimensions attending to the composition of and interrelated patterns in organizations and, genetic dimensions focusing on the origins of culture as interactive adaptive processes between groups and their environment. Broadly speaking, culture has bound groups of people by common explicit (e.g., tangible artifacts, clothing, food, festivals, and behaviors readily observed by outsiders) and/or implicit (e.g., intangible conscious and unconscious values), assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, and feelings and has endured over time and space. Additionally, while people may be identified with one or more groups, the intensity and resilience of belongingness can vary with the interaction of self-investment and degree of group acceptance.

How people’s racial-cultural assumptions shape the way in which culture is embraced, rejected, and ignored has been described in Carter’s (1995) classification system. In the Universal paradigm, shared similarities are affirmed as universal human experiences and differences as secondary intragroup variations. In the Ubiquitous paradigm, socially derived circumstances constitute cultural groups. From this perspective, people embrace one or more socially derived cultural group affiliations. Unlike the Universal paradigm, the Ubiquitous paradigm acknowledges and accentuates differences by promoting cultural sensitivity to increase people’s awareness of variation. Influenced by anthropology, the Traditional paradigm equates culture with geography (e.g., country) and adaptive socialization (e.g., birth, up-bringing). Since cultural membership circumscribes personality development by experiencing ‘cultures’ through exposure and cultural informants, culture is understood as personal circumstances superseded by the dominant culture. In the Race-based paradigm, culture is a function of transcending racialized experiences. Becoming aware of the effects of racism, oppression, and promoting racial identity development, culture is understood by how race and racism influence power and authority in the USA. In the fifth Pan-National paradigm, culture is constructed as how racial group affiliation and the distribution of power influence global issues.

2.1 Cultural Pluralism And The Tyranny Of The Shoulds

Historically, group relations between White Anglo and all other racial-cultural groups in the USA have influenced psychological, social, and cultural adjustment for members of dominant (e.g., mainly White Anglo-Saxon) and subordinate cultural (e.g., visible racial-cultural) groups. For example, from the mid 1700s to the early 1880s, the melting pot concept (Zangwill 1910) assumed all entering US inhabitants would willingly relinquish indigenous heritages and adopt existing White Anglo-Saxon cultural norms. From the late 1880s to the mid-1950s, this biologically blended melting pot became ‘Americanized’ (Fairchild 1926). Through Americanization, the ideology of cultural pluralism or cultural unity advocated including visible racial-cultural groups into ‘mainstream’ American culture. Symbolic appreciation for diversity, especially from other civilizations beside White-European societies through congressional legislation and Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s and 1970s furthered the cultural pluralist movement. However, while White European immigrants were expected to assimilate dominant White Anglo-Saxon cultural norms, visible racial–cultural groups were still exclu-ded and institutionally segregated.

Thus, cultural pluralism ideology was contra-dictory to the realities of the American ‘melting pot.’ While preserving cultural and social heritages as a means to creating a new society, economic, political, and educational separatism for visible racial-cultural groups was creating a ‘tyranny of the shoulds’— idealized images and standards imposed upon visible racial-cultural people by the dominant society resulting in the suppression of the ‘true self’ (Horney 1950). Despite conformist trends throughout the nineteenth century, voices of dissent and the ‘tyranny of the shoulds’ was heard in the words of W.E.B. Dubois as:

… a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (1989, p. 3).

At some level, cultural pluralism may have enabled visible racial-cultural people to exist in threatening environments. However, the consequences of vigilance against repressive environments also created unnecessary personal and group self-doubt, alienation, and isolation from resources and support, thus limiting a person’s ability to achieve their full potential.

2.2 Cultural Pluralism And Cross-Cultural Psychology

While cross-cultural, diversity, multicultural, and cultural pluralism have been used interchangeably, these terms have generally referred to people who are members of visible racial-cultural groups (e.g., American Indians, Blacks, Asians, Latinos). Recognizing the health disparities of these visible racial-cultural groups, the cross-cultural psychology movement has been focused upon improving mental health services for members of these groups. Thus, cross-cultural psychology presumed that ‘cross-cultural counseling problems were most likely to occur when there was a low degree of client–counselor assumed similarity … [where] the practitioner is … a member of the majority group and the client is a minority group member … [and] include[s] … counselor therapist and client … minority individuals, but represent[ing] different minority groups ([B]lack-Hispanic, Asian-American-American Indian, (Sue et al. 1982, p. 47). By appreciating group differences, cross-cultural psychologists believed that understanding racial-cultural group specific knowledge (e.g., values, customs, communication patterns) would eliminate racial-cultural mental health disparities. For example, misunderstandings arising from cultural variations in values and language were suggested as antecedents to early psychotherapy terminations at rates greater than 50 percent compared to 30 percent for White clients (Sue and Sue 1999).

Recognizing the majority of mental health educators and practitioners are White, professional organizations developed guidelines endorsing cross-cultural culture-specific heritage education about specific visible racial-cultural groups (e.g., Blacks, American Indians, Asian and Pacific Islanders, Latinos) in hopes that sensitizing White practitioners to issues of ‘culturally different’ people, practitioners would become more effective counselors (American Psychological Association 1991, Sue et al. 1982, 1992). For example, a plethora of information exists about group specific racial-cultural knowledge about self-expression, norms, family structures, and values for ‘special populations’ (e.g., restraint of emotions and hierarchical relationships for Asian American clients, extended family and religion for Latino and Black clients and harmony and cooperation among American Indians). (It should be noted that these categories have been recently expanded to include Whites, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, etc. and effects of institutional racism, classism, and sexism (Sue and Sue 1999).)

Thus, cross-cultural educational strategies have virtually used ‘othered’ focused (Sue and Sue 1999) or universal (Fischer et al. 1998, p. 561) perspectives when teaching about cultural issues. If cultural pluralism and cross-cultural psychology have been effective in equity and inclusion of underserved visible racial-cultural groups, why does racial-cultural separatism continue to exist?

Several reasons can account for this ongoing separatist phenomenon. Overall, cultural pluralism has not provided meaningful principles about psychological well-being. Beyond obvious axioms such as all humans have language, social systems, emotions, and values and cultural norms, identification of group under- standing perceived specific racial-cultural groups by group comparisons has neglected existing within group variation. The results have been simplistic caricatures about service delivery, cultural norms, and group homogeneity. Consequently, using a social constructivist approach, multicultural psychologists have begun developing more inclusive, affective, and intrapsychic approaches to applied mental health.

2.3 Moving From Cross-Cultural To Multicultural Psychology

Understanding people from a multicultural perspective has meant simultaneously recognizing individual and group identities. From this perspective, culture accounts for internal and external personal and social realities by becoming distinct from biological and geographical heritage. In this regard, the importance of racial-cultural self-exploration of understanding explicit content knowledge and implicit affective processes has been most illustrative in the clinical bias literature where scholars have shown mental health professionals susceptibility to clinical bias (Oakes et al. 1994). Given issues of professional and personal bias, applied psychology and other mental health training programs have been remiss when addressing how personal assumptions influence professional development. Lacking has been a counselor-focused framework incorporating a multicultural inclusive perspective. By challenging people’s beliefs and assumptions about who they are as cultural people, mental health professionals can more realistically contextualize how social, historical, and political processes have influenced their personal and professional development

While the cross-cultural competencies (Sue et al. 1982) were expanded from 11 to 31 in 1992 (Sue et al. 1992), the 1998 multicultural competency guidelines (Sue et al. 1998) have taken a fundamental shift towards being more culturally inclusive by focusing upon issues of within group variation (e.g., counselor and client racial–cultural identity development into counseling relationships, interventions, and processes) and proposing greater latitude in defining professional roles and responsibilities. Here, multicultural unlike cross-cultural psychology has suggested mere intellectual understanding of visible racial-cultural groups norms does not meaningfully translate into adequate or sufficient counseling skills.

Thus, the movement from cross-cultural to multi-cultural psychology has involved a fundamental shift of cognitive learning about (e.g., between group differences) visible racial-cultural groups to an integrated cognitive-affective racial-cultural identity (within group individual variation) orientation. Thus, clarifying ones’ own racial and cultural identities, developing a sense of comfort and self-acceptance within a social, historical, and political framework, and respectfully relating and functioning with all racial-cultural groups have become essential pre- requisites for developing multicultural competence (Carter 1995, Sue et al. 1998).

3. Multicultural Psychology And Racial-Cultural Identity Development

People throughout time have been challenged to understand their sense of self and life experiences in unifying ways. As critical tools for cultural under-standing, racial-cultural identity development models have been considered ‘one of the most promising approaches to the field of multicultural counseling therapy’ (Sue and Sue 1999, p. 123). By incorporating sociopolitical contexts, racial identity theories have provided a structure of how to understand life experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of one’s own and other racial-cultural groups, identity formation and intra-group variation.

Diagnostically, racial-cultural identity models also have clinical utility by framing how individuals’ experiences of counseling are influenced by their racial-cultural identity and not simply linked to presumed racial-cultural group affiliations (Carter 1995).

Racial-cultural identity attitude theories are dynamic identity models representing developmental ego differentiation and have existed for Blacks, other visible racial-cultural people (e.g., Asian, Latino, women), and Whites since the early 1970s (Sue and Sue 1999). Racial identity attitudes are the psycho-logical consequences of racial socialization.

Whereas people are socialized in racialized environments, racial-cultural ego identity development is the psychological reaction to the benefits and consequences of racial-cultural social systems. Involving simultaneous perspectives of oneself in relation to members of dominant and subordinate groups, people with less developed racial-cultural ego identity statuses hold more simplistic and unexamined notions about race and race relations while greater differentiated racial-cultural ego identity statuses are based on more accurate and examined personal and group information and experiences. Thus, a person’s presumed racial-cultural phenotype does not preclude racial- cultural orientation. Rather, a person’s overall psychological self that has been validated, denied, or ignored influences the manner in which racial identity has been integrated into one’s personality and psychological well-being. By exploring the psychological aspects of how feelings, thoughts, and behaviors people have about their own and other’s race, a more realistic understanding of who a person rather than what a person is becomes possible.

3.1 Racial Identity Theory

Based upon internal racial identification levels, racial identity models have provided a framework for under-standing intra-group socio-racial psychological perspectives. According to Black racial identity theory (and more broadly, People of Color Identity Theory), Black people develop from (a) overvaluing and idealizing White cultural norms and internalizing negative stereotypes of Blacks (Preencounter); (b) feeling con-fusion as they try to understand their previously held beliefs of White superiority and Black inferiority (Encounter); (c) affirming ‘Blackness’ and denigrating ‘Whiteness’ by idealizing African cultural heritage and withdrawing from White society (Immersion); (d) accepting strengths and weaknesses of Black people and incorporating a more affirming and realistic Black identity (Emersion); (e) intellectually assessing and responding to Whites (internalization); and (f) integrating a positive Black identity while maintaining a balanced perspective of ‘Whiteness’ motivated by personal preferences rather than racial group self-denial (Integrative Awareness) (Carter 1995).

In White racial identity theory, identity development involves the abandonment of racism and the development of a non-racist White identity by moving from (a) being unaware of their own racial group and ignoring the race of others (Contact); (b) becoming aware of the saliency of Whiteness, feeling guilty over personal internal standards and societal norms about race and over-identifying with Blacks (Disintegration); (c) rejecting Blacks and over idealizing White-ness (Reintegration); (d) intellectualizing rather than emotionally understanding race (Pseudo-Independence); (e) exploring biases and redefining Whiteness by trying to change Whites instead of Blacks (Immersion Emersion); and (f) emotionally and intellectually internalizing a positive White identity through appreciation for and respect of racial differences and similarities (Autonomy) (Carter 1995).

Overall, for visible racial-cultural people, as members of less powerful sociocultural groups, the primary socioracial identity issue in developing racial-cultural identity means overcoming internalized negative stereotypes associated with their racial-cultural group affiliation. For Whites, as members of the dominant sociocultural group, racial-cultural identity development means overcoming entitled stereotyping, learning self-value and appreciation as a White person. Therefore, in efforts to serve as racial-cultural change agents, all people must seek and promote racial-cultural affirmation—the experience of having various facets of their racial-cultural identities validated for themselves and by others. Thus, the strength of racial-cultural identity models has relied upon their dynamic nature of understanding within group racial-cultural variation within a social, historical, and political context as well as their diagnostic value for informing counseling processes and outcomes.

Whether its socio-political forces vs. poor psychological functioning, racial-cultural issues are silent or powerful environmental and psychological realities in a person’s development. By examining how racial-cultural issues influence psychological phenomenon, therapists can help clients discover how their racial–cultural ego identity forms a filter which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors organize perceptions and interpretations of thoughts, emotions, and psychological life. To this end, racial-cultural identity models provide a framework understanding personal racial-cultural intrapsychic phenomena with in and between people.

4. Conclusions

Since the 1970s, scholars, educators, and applied mental health professionals have become increasingly aware that for the needs of all clients to be met, multicultural psychology is a needed and essential change for the profession (American Psychological Association [APA] 1991). However, since the original cross-cultural counseling competencies position paper (Sue et al. 1982) to the latest multicultural competences (Sue et. al. 1998), educators’ ambivalence towards programmatic multicultural education has continued through decreasing multicultural-related courses in counselor preparation programs (Hollis and Wantz 1994), lack of comprehensive training models (Ridley et al. 1994) and professionals who continue to perceive themselves as having limited multicultural counseling competence providing mental health services (Allison et al. 1994).

Since intellectual knowing does not necessarily translate into sufficient multicultural counseling competence, multicultural psychology in the twenty-first century must mean looking beyond the cross-cultural ‘tyranny of shoulds’ of cultural groups differences toward racial–cultural self-reflection. Since mental health professionals’ worldviews are neither neutral or culture free, questions posed, studies de-signed, and results interpreted will be inherently influenced by their racial-cultural perspectives.

As Gordon (1999) so aptly states:

I like to remind people who cannot recognize it that I am an African-American male, born in the United States in the the century, and that these things influence me and what I do. They influence the way I think about things. When I identify a problem, to investigate, I bring my African-American, the century, male person to bear on it. That person is likely to be somewhat different from some of my colleagues who do not share my particular background and identity …. each of us bring to our work may be different. Most important is that those perspectives may influence our respective findings as well as our interpretations – even though we may like to think of findings as being objective (p. 150).

Thus, cognitively and affectively understanding ones’ own racial and cultural identities and developing a sense of comfort and self-acceptance are essential prerequisites for developing multicultural competence. Accordingly, cognitive-affective reflective learning of personal and social identities has been shown to be a powerful and effective method of developing multicultural counseling competence (Carter 1995).

For example, an ecological person-process training framework has been successful in allowing trainees to gain multicultural counseling competence (Tomlin-son-Clarke and Ota Wang 1999). Allowing examination of who a person is, this model has emphasized how intra- intergroup processes influence personal and social racial-cultural identity development. Here, people have been conceptualized within interlocking dynamic systems of: personal individual interactions (microsystem); institutions directly influencing individuals (mesosystem); institutional policies (exo-system); and the overall zeitgeist (Tomlinson-Clarke and Ota Wang 1999).

Unfortunately, while everyone has potential to develop multicultural competence, sociocultural environments have often imposed barriers of conformity, prejudice, and oppression, limiting essential cognitive and racial-cultural flexibility. Moreover, to varying degrees, people have been overtly or covertly subjected to these obstructions. For example, in conformity—the prevalence of expected societal, institutional or self-imposed mythical ideals (e.g., White, blonde, blue-eyed people are smarter than those who have darker complexions) have often resulted in feelings of inferiority for those who do not fit these ideals and of superiority for those who do. Beyond limiting, these mythical ideals have also prevented others from recognizing the value of diversity. In prejudice—those who hold the power in society and in institutions have denied equity to people who are different from them by conveying messages of ‘you can’t be successful unless your phenotype, attitudes, and behaviors are similar to ours.’ Because prejudice promotes group and cultural superiority, its destructive forces have artificially separated racial-cultural groups. And with oppression, this barrier has been socially and personally destructive due to mythical prescriptions for visible racial-cultural people to be what they are not while exploiting them for being who they are as means for keeping them from true full participation in society.

So how can social scientists nurture the development of multicultural psychology? A discipline hoping to understand, and value diversity must identify and eliminate overt and covert conformity, prejudice, and oppression in its institutions and members. Additionally, programmatic multicultural programs with goals of recognizing, respecting and learning from individual and cultural similarities and differences will combat the present day mythical social ideals and stereotypes resulting in the exploitation, coercion, and oppression of all people. While difficulties exist in eradicating xenophobia and notions of individual, group, and cultural superiority inferiority, these obstacles will be outweighed by the ultimate rewards of all people having the opportunity to develop into their fullest personal, social, and racial-cultural potential. Thus, educators will need to continue developing training programs to incorporate cognitive affective racial-cultural learning so counselors will be prepared to realistically work with inherent human variation. By clarifying ones’ own racial and cultural identities and developing a self-acceptance, counselors will be able to respectfully and effectively work with all racial-cultural groups. Thus, the growth of multicultural psychology will depend on those who teach, research, and practice to continually develop themselves as racial-cultural people. Institutional support will pro-vide the fertile ground necessary to do this work of moving beyond ignorance, tolerance, to meaningful understanding. Ultimately, the results will be a world where multicultural psychology is a lifestyle lending itself to an openness of understanding who people are rather than what they are imagined to be.

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