Multicultural Counseling: From Diversity to Universality

Rogers’s Person-Centered Approach: Consideration for Use in Multicultural Counseling

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.

Career and Vocational Assessment 1995-1996: A Biennial Review

This selective review of career assessment literature covers the period 1995 to 1996. The authors emphasize published research related to vocational theories and instruments, particularly research concerning career counseling and individual career development, and identify trends and new advances in career assessment. They conclude that Holland's vocational typology continues to be prominent, that the structure of interests is an unresolved issue, that more research has been conducted in previously neglected areas, that the development of new measures and improvement of old ones continues at a rapid pace, that type of methodology affects results, and that other literatures contain possibilities for career assessment. The authors also suggest implications for policy and research.

Reconceptualizing Multicultural Counseling

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.

Western Models of Counseling and Psychotherapy within Turkey

This article examines the current usage of Western counseling and psychotherapeutic models with a special emphasis on the local realities of Turkish culture. It explores the applicability of the Western counseling models and reviews the current status of the application of the Western models along with the related practices in Turkish clinical and nonclinical settings. The role of the Turkish counselor within the cultural context is stressed. Implications for the multicultural counselors are discussed, and some recommendations for a culturally relevant model are proposed.

A Person-Centered Approach to Multicultural Counseling Competence

This article examines current and historical trends in psychotherapy research and practice with racial/ethnic minority populations. Initially, research on Derald Sue’s multicultural counseling competencies is provided as a foundation to further examine the evidence regarding effective cultural adaptations to mainstream treatment approaches, such as cognitive-behavior therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy. Next, a brief outline of Carl Rogers’s psychotherapy research tradition is presented, with a focus on both past and present evidence suggesting that person-centered therapy may be effective across diagnoses, as well as cultures. Using psychotherapy evidence from both the latter half of the 20th century and the initial decades of the 21st century, cultural adaptations to previously hypothesized person-centered therapy mechanisms of change are proposed. In particular, this culturally adapted person-centered approach is suggested to provide a competent and effective treatment system for racial/ethnic minority clients and families.

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN A CONTENT ANALYSIS STUDY OF 608 DREAM REPORTS FROM RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS IN THE UNITED STATES

This investigation asked the question: “Are there significant content differences between male and female dream reports obtained in the United States?” Most of the 608 research participants provided dream reports (one per person) in response to a request from the senior author at dream seminars he gave between 1990 and 1996; the other dream reports were provided by friends and acquaintances of seminar participants. The total sample included 330 female and 278 male dream reports. Dreams were coded according to Hall-Van de Castle criteria on 53 categories, subcategories, and indices. The use of Cohen's h-statistic revealed several gender differences, most of which resembled those found by previous researchers.

The Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank: examining potential race differences

The Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank (RISB; Rotter, Lah, & Rafferty, 1992; Rotter & Rafferty, 1950) was administered to African American (n = 94) and White (n = 100) members of fraternal organizations at a large Midwestern university to explore possible influences of racial group and socially desirable response tendencies. The RISB protocols were reliably scored (interrater agreement = 92%) by 3 independent scorers blind to participant racial membership. The mean scores of the 2 racial groups were not significantly different (p > .05). However, using the traditional categorical placement scores resulted in a disproportionate assignment rate for African American scores to the maladjusted group than would be anticipated by mere chance.