Following a discussion i had with the PhD group thsi morning about definitions and boundaries of roles within the professions in the so-called ‘talking therapies’ ( i am not even sure what words/terms to use here as i write now to encompass it all….it is not possible cause there is not a worldwide mutual agreement around the matter!), i have spend a good few hours this evening searching the literature around that…and i did get quite lost! there is a lot of confusion around how the terms ‘counsellor’, ‘psychoterapist’, the different branches of psychology etc are used in the literature and the claims that are taken in relation to professionalisation, regulations and ultimately this impacts on the issue of identity of the ‘therapist’ (if it is to use that term). All this story is mangnified and becomes even more complex for the therapits that moves to work in a different country from where qualifications where received etc, according to the state of affairs in a particulat system, esulting, quite often, in losing the value of qualifications when attempting to transfer to another culture, let alone permission to practice etc. This matter is core in my topic, also huge and i cannot cover it in my thesis. I do have to make reference to it though and discuss its complexity; also come to a stance that i am adopting about how i will use words/terms in my writing in the thesis…i need to keep focused, patient and remember that i cannot change the world….it does feel daunting though that a professional field whose work is to work with self and identity and self-awareness and the like, expresses so much confusion around its own professional identity and culture…

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 42, No. 2, 48-65 (2002)

Rogers’s Person-Centered Approach: Consideration for Use in Multicultural Counseling
Carol MacDougall – Alberta, Canada

To provide competent counseling services to an increasingly diverse clientele, attention must be given to the applicability of the dominant theoretical orientations. Rogers’s person-centered approach is widely used, but the appropriateness of its diverse applications should not be assumed. This article considers the applicability of Rogers’s person-centered approach in multicultural counseling contexts.

When looking at this reference, the phrase ‘the encounter with self through the process of cross-cultural transition’ is something that vividly describes the area i am exploring in my PhD, in terms of the ‘ self’ of the immigrant therapist or the therapist ‘on the move’. I keep a record of it for a search soon:

Grabosky, T. K. (2005) The encounter with self through the process of cross-cultural transition: The perspective of Japanese women who study in higher education institutions in the United States. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences. Vol 65(9-A), 2005, pp. 3288.

I found this useful abstract below around the idea of culture specific vs. universal approaches to therapy:

Some tension appears to exist in the literature between the emic, or culturally specific, and etic, or universal, approaches to counseling with culturally different clients. Prompted by the lack of clear theoretical models for multicultural counseling, as well as by the inability of specific factors to explain treatment effectiveness in general, we suggest that consideration of the common factors found in psychotherapy and healing across cultures provides a useful way to bridge the gap between culturally specific and universal approaches. We believe that the skeleton of universal healing factors requires the flesh of cultural knowledge, resulting in the formulation of multicultural counseling as universal healing processes taking place in a culturally sensitive context. We propose that this perspective (a) may serve as a framework for unifying the diverse body of multi-cultural counseling literature, (b) has some empirical support, and (c) may be useful in guiding future multicultural research, training, and practice. … Read more »