Multicultural Counseling

Kwong-Liem Karl Kwan

Multicultural counseling is one of the major theoretical forces in psychology. It emerged as a necessary backlash to traditional psychological theories that assumed that Eurocentric/White and middle-class values are societal norms. Competence in multicultural counseling is crucial in societies with multiple representations of cultural groups whose social power and privilege statuses are differentiated based on visible (e.g., race, gender) and invisible (e.g., homosexual/bisexual/trans-gendered orientation, language) attributes. Multicultural counseling is best understood in relation to competence guidelines published and enforced by professional counseling and psychology associations in multicultural countries (e.g., United States). A tripartite model presented by Derald Wing Sue and his colleagues in 1992 provided a conceptual basis to delineate three key components of multicultural counseling competency: (1) knowledge of cultural minority groups, (2) awareness of therapist's own worldview and cultural biases, and (3) application of culturally appropriate skills to intervene with client's presenting concerns as well as therapist biases. ...

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