Multicultural Counseling Midterm Exam

Why multicultural counseling? 

Identity: 

  • Beyond race, gender, and sexuality, what makes up our identity?

  • Consider: how we exist in the world, how we relate to others, our experiences and opportunities, etc. 

Power: 

  • As counselors, we operate in a role of power 

  • Power dynamics and structures of the world will play out in the therapy space 

  • Are we aware of the power we hold, and how this is impacted in our personal identities and those of our clients? 

Cultural competence and cultural humility: (We are aiming toward humility) 

  • Cultural competence: 

    • Implications of an unchanging set of beliefs applicable to all members of a group 

    • Assumptions about who the counselor is (white, non-Hispanic, male, heterosexual, English-speaking) 

    • Us vs. them 

    • Suggests mastery 

  • Cultural humility:

    • “Way of being” vs. “way of doing” 

    • Admission that one does not know and is willing to learn from clients 

    • Cultivates person-centered care 


Chapter 1: Understanding resistance to multicultural training

Reactions to the text and course content: 

  • Wide variety of often emotional reactions 

  • Contention in classrooms 

  • Major worldview differences


Emotional self-revelations and fears: 

  • Culturally competent mental health professionals can discuss emotions across cultures

  • Intense feelings often prevent multicultural understanding

  • A professional’s way of dealing with feelings can enhance or impede self-understanding as cultural beings 


Invalidation vs. affirmation: 

  • Marginalized group members often feel dismissed or ignored 

  • When bringing up discrimination/bias: 

    • Misreading things 

    • Overly sensitive, unduly suspicious, paranoid 

    • “Crazy” to think that 

  • Whites ignore racism, sexism, homophobia 

    • Discomfort 

    • Well-intentioned Whites and avoidance 


Microaggressions: 

  • Everyday putdowns to socially devalued groups 

  • Often by an unaware, well-intentioned majority group 

  • A lifetime of microaggressions becomes psychologically harmful 

  • Often based on stereotypes/assumptions 


Resistance to multicultural training: 

  • Cognitive resistance: 

    • Denial 

      • The belief that racism is in the past 

      • exaggeration/misperception 

    • White students use silence to conceal thoughts 

    • Avoidance of certain (uncomfortable) topics 

  • Emotional resistance: 

    • Blocks ability to acknowledge, understand, make meaning 

    • Anxiety and fear 

      • Primary subjective emotion encountered by white students 

      • Turning inward = block participation 

    • Defensiveness and anger 

      • Protective stance and striking back at the perpetrator (often statement by POC) 

      • Feeling personally accused in discussions of bigotry 

      • Counterattack when feeling accused 

    • Guilt, regret, and remorse 

      • Violation of the internal moral code compromised our own standards of conduct 

      • White guilt 

  • Behavioral resistance: 

  • Helplessness — inaction

  • Escape responsibility 

  • Strategies help provide awareness/personal growth 

Cautions: 

  • The majority group members must speak up and actively participate 

    • Quiet allyship vs active process to dismantle ethnocentric, White supremacist ideals 

  • Minorities/marginalized students: 

    • Often dispute/out speak white classmates 

    • Might delight in White classmates squirming 

    • Might take out anger on classmates 

    • Less about aiding understanding – rather feeling similar pain 

  • Expressing anger can be healing 

    • The enemy must be white supremacy, racism, and ethnocentrism 

  • None of us are immune from bias, prejudice, and discrimination 

    • Multicultural training is not only for white students 


Implications for clinical practice: 

  • Listen and be open to the disempowered 

  • Do not negate voices becoming defensive 

  • No one is free from society’s biases 

  • Understand and acknowledge personal emotions 

  • Understand the benefits of past and present 

  • Be open to exploring the self as a racial, ethnic, and cultural being 

  • Engage in open dialogue 

  • Continue to learn about self 

  • Fewer than half of therapists could even recognize microaggressions 


Race and culture matters: 

  • Culturally universal (etic) vs culturally specific (emic) formularions

  • Etic: 

    • Disorders appear in all cultures/societies 

    • Western concepts of normality/abnormality across cultures 

  • Emic: 

    • Determining factors to behavior disorders 

    • Lifestyles, cultural values, and worldviews 

    • Theories of human development: 

      • Arise within a cultural context

      • EuroAmerican values are biased 

The Nature of Multicultural counseling competence: 

  • Good clinical practice subsumes cultural competence 

  • Cultural competence is superordinate to counseling competence

  • Therapeutic bias may cause cultural errors

  • Counseling/psychotherapy definitions are culture bound

  • The harm of cultural insensitivity

  • Good counseling is culturally responsive counseling

Dimensions of identity: 

  • Counseling/psychotherapy tend to ignore group dimension 

    • White counselor now acknowledging culture of minority (we are all the same under the skin) 

    • Avoidance may negate intimacy of clients culture 

    • May make minority client feel misunderstood 

    • Preventing success in counseling 

  • Counseling and psychotherapy 

  • Are of EuroAmerican origin 

  • Have strong Western philosophical assumptions and values 

  • One size fits all - clients are the same and techniques apply to all 

  • Inclusive of multiculturalism: 

  • May obscure understanding of race as powerful 

  • Not intended to minimize multicultural importance 

  • Expresses discomfort felt by psychologists 

  • Race topics are usually avoided 

  • Rather, discuss gender discrimination 

  • To enhance multicultural understanding and sensitivity: 

  • Understanding sociopolitics that dilute race 

  • Acknowledge existence of other groups identities 

  • Social class, gender, ability/disability, age, etc. 














Dimensions of personal identity development: 



Individual level: 

  • All individuals are, in some respects, like no other individuals 

  • No two individuals ever share the same genetic endowment — human inheritance guarantees differences 

  • No two of us share the exact same experiences in our society 

  • Different experiences will contribute to individual uniqueness

Group level: 

  • Individuals are in some respects, like some other individuals 

  • Forces that may define helping relationship: 

    • Race, ethnicity, culture 

    • Influence thinking, decision-making behavior 

  • Different theories represent different worldviews 

  • Each cultural group defines abnormalities differently 

  • Different cultures view helping professional different 

    • Including gender and sexual orientation 

Universal level: 

  • All individuals are in some respects, like all other individuals 

  • Universal to our commonalities include: 

    • Biological and physical similarities 

    • Common life experiences (birth, death, love, sadness, and so forth) 

    • Self-awareness 

    • The ability to use symbols, such as language 

Individual and universal biases in mental health: 

  • Negation of cultural identity 

  • Cultural issues show oppression/personal bias 

  • Racial and ethnic differences: 

    • Have been interpreted from deficit perspective 

    • Equated with being “normal” or “pathological” 

  • If wanting to understand human condition: 

    • Cannot neglect any identity 

    • Psychological acknowledgments influencing gender, race, etc. 

  • Failure to acknowledge will skew understanding 

  • Group identities reveal many references 

    • Ex: elderly, gay man, latinx, represents four reference groups 

  • Helping professional must balance understanding of multiple identities 

  • Highly probable that different racial and ethnic minority groups perceive the competence of the helping professional differently than do mainstream client group 

What is MCT? 

  • Helping role using clients experience/cultural values 

  • Consistent with life experiences and cultural values 

  • Recognizes individual, group, and universal identities 

  • Universal and culture - specific strategies 

  • Individualism and collectivism 

  • Client and client systems 

What is cultural competence? 

  • Aware of own values, biases, etc. 

  • Understand worldview of culturally diverse clients 

  • Develop relevant practices with diverse clients 

  • Ongoing aspirational process 

  • Considers factors outside client into client systems 

  • Important if problem resides outside client 

Three major domains of cultural competence: 

  • Attitudes/beliefs component 

  • Knowledge component 

  • Skills component 

Two levels of cultural competence: 

  • Personal/individual 

  • Organizational/system 

Goals for students: 

  • Increase self-awareness (biases, values, etc.) 

  • Acquire knowledge of diverse cultures (history) 

  • Development of cultural interpersonal skills 

Development of alternative helping roles: 

  • More one-on-one therapy 

  • Having a more active helping style 

  • Working outside the office (home, institution, or community) 

  • Being focused on changing environmental conditions, as opposed to changing the client 

  • Viewing the client as encountering problems rather than as having a problem

  • Being oriented toward prevention rather than remediation 

  • Shouldering increased responsibility for determining the course and the outcome of the helping process 

Cultural humility: 

  • “Way of being” rather than “way of doing” 

  • Implications in counseling: 

    • Important to minority clients 

    • Correlation of continuing in treatment 

    • Relates to strength of therapeutic alliance 

    • Related to improvement in therapy 

Multicultural counseling competences: 

  • Awareness

  • Knowledge 

  • Skills 

Social Justice and cultural competence: 

  • Multiculturalism leads to social justice initiatives 

  • Proposes conceptual framework including: 

    • Quadrants 

      • Privilege and oppressed statuses 

    • Domains 

      • Counselor self-awareness 

      • Client worldview 

      • Counseling relationships 

      • Counseling and advocacy interventions 

    • Competencies 

      • Attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, skills, action

Social justice and cultural competence: 

  • Quadrants address power of privilege: 

    • Privileged counselor with oppressed client 

    • Privileged counselor with privileged client 

    • Oppressed counselor with privileged client 

    • Oppressed counselor with oppressed client 

Implications for clinical practice: 

  • Multiculturalism encompasses race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. 

  • Identify culture-specific and culture-universal domains 

  • Diverse clients may perceive mental illness differently 

  • Cultural competence is inclusive and superordinate 

  • Able to leave conventional counselor role 

  • Use lifestyle/cultural systems consistent modalities 

  • Multicultural orientation/cultural humility is successful