Race, Culture, and Counselling

Book excerpt: Race, Culture and Counselling seeks to explore some of the major dimensions and subtleties underlying the issues of race and culture and how these might impact upon counselling-psychotherapeutic relationships. It contributes to the literature that urges awareness, understanding and acceptance between people of different cultural, racial and linguistic origins. The dimensions of race and culture are extremely complex and have many consequences in therapy. Wherever persons of different races and cultures come together in a counselling relationship, some of their interactions will be an unknown quanitity, each may experience discomfort and fear and the results, for both parties, might be negative. This is not a book of case studies, neither is it a cookbook manual of 'how to do it'. Rather, it articulates a range of issues that are pertinent to therapists who live and work in a multi-racial society and also addresses the challenges posed to trainers, supervisors and researchers of counselling and psychotherapy. 'Scores of mental health professionals in both Great Britain and the United States seem to be ill prepared to provide culturally appropriate counselling services to a diverse population ....This book is not only timely, but critical to the future of counselling theory and practice. It is an excellent synthesis of traditional and contemporary ideas related to issues of race and culture in counselling.' - Courtland Lee, Professor of Counsellor Education, University of Virginia, USA