Chapter 4

Culturally skilled counselor

Competence pertaining to multicultural practice based on awareness of one's own values and beliefs, understanding the clients worldview, and acquiring culturally appropriate intervention strategies and techniques.

Coursework

Considered essential for understanding and applying cultural themes and counseling. The authors believe that multicultural topics need to be integrated throughout the curriculum, and not simply limited to a single course.

Self exploratory journey

First step in the process of acquiring multicultural counseling skills. Ideally this would help one identify any potential blindspots and would be required of all trainees in mental health professions and would be supervised by someone with experience in multicultural issues.

Culture

Includes demographic variables such as age, gender, and place of residence; status variables such as social, educational, and economic background; formal and informal affiliations; and the ethnographic variables of nationality, ethnicity, language, and religion.

Diversity

Individual differences such as age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and physical ability or disability.

Bisexuals

Individuals who are psychologically, emotionally, and sexually attracted to both women and men.

Discrimination

Involves behaving differently, usually unfairly, toward a specific group of people.

Multicultural competencies

Knowledge and skills that are essential for being a culturally skilled practitioner that have been endorsed by various professional organizations.

Gay men

Men who are psychologically, emotionally, and sexually attracted to other men.

Cultural countertransference

Refers to therapists developing self understanding of how their values, feelings, attitudes, and biases influence their work with culturally different clients.

Cultural racism

The belief that one group's history, way of life, religion, values, and traditions are superior to others.

Cultural encapsulated counselor

A counselor who defines reality according to one set of cultural assumptions and shows insensitivity to cultural variations among individuals.

Multiculturalism

A generic term that indicates any relationship between and within two or more diverse groups. Cross-cultural, transcultural, and intercultural are terms with similar meanings.

Ethnic Minority group

A group of people who have been singled out for differential and unequal treatment and who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.

Multicultural counseling

A helping role and process that uses approaches and defines goals consistent with the life experiences and cultural values of clients.

Cultural tunnel vision

A perception of reality that is based on a severely limited set of cultural experiences.

Cultural pluralism

A perspective that recognizes that culture is complex and values diversity of beliefs and values.

Cultural diversity competence

A practitioner's level of awareness, knowledge, and interpersonal skill whenworking with individuals from diverse backgrounds.

Ethnicity

A sense of identity that stems from common ancestry, history, nationality, religion, and race.

Homosexuality

A sexual orientation whereby people seeking emotional and sexual relationships with same gendered individuals.

Cultural centered counseling

A three-stage developmental sequence, from multicultural awareness to knowledge and comprehension to skills and applications.

Diversity sensitive counseling

An approach that takes into account a client's age, culture, disability, education level, ethnicity, gender, language, physique, race, religion, residential location, sexual orientation, socioeconomic situation, and trauma.

Racism

Any pattern of behavior that, solely because of race or culture, denies access to opportunities or privileges to members of one racial or cultural group while perpetuating access to opportunities and privileges to members of another racial or cultural group.

Stereotypes

Oversimplified and uncritical generalizations about individuals who are identified as belonging to a specific group.

Cultural empathy

Pertains to therapists' awareness of clients' worldviews, which is acknowledged in relation to therapists' awareness of their own personal bias.

Unintentional racism

The often subtle, indirect, and unconscious form of racism that is often masked by the assumption that one is free of bias.

Cultural diversity

The spectrum of differences that exist among groups of people with definable and unique cultural backgrounds.

Internship

Training program that holds diversity as a central value. Supervised experiences in the field and internships are given special prominence.

Experiential approaches

Used as a way to increase self-awareness and to identify and examine attitudes associated with diversity competence. These approaches encourage trainees to pay attention to their thoughts, feelings, and actions in exploring their worldviews.

Lesbians

Women who are psychologically, emotionally, and sexually attracted to other women.