This research examines issues relevant to the subject of concerns that professional counselors must be aware of when they serve clients "cross-culturally." Counselors whose clients are members of social groups that are ethnically or culturally marginalized relative to white mainstream American culture--or who are themselves examples of the emerging diversity of the profession--are uniquely positioned as practitioners. The experience of the embodied "other" presents rather unusual ethical complications to a counseling environment that may already have an "alien" aspect to it because of the unease and insecurity of clients who seek out psychotherapy. Such complications are the focus of this research.
One of the first principles of psychotherapy training is that "there must be a fluctuating interplay between doctor and patient" (Fromm-Reichmann, 1950, p. 5). That of course includes the dynamics of (for example) transference and countertransference, but in order for customary clinical processes to get under way, it is first necessary for the client and counselor to make a connection at the human level. Because all psychotherapy clients to some extent "suffer[] from an impairment in self-assurance . . . [and are] insecure and anxious" (Fromm-Reichmann, 1950, p. 13), it is essential that they feel secure in the structure of the counseling setting, and it is the responsibility of the counselor/therapist to make the effort to take care of the client in that regard. Despite the fact that, over the course of the last 30 years of the 20th century, the transformation of the US from a segregated to integrated culture and advances in civil rights have made cross-cultural contact between professional practitioners and clients more likely, it is also unrealistic to expect that residual racism or envy is going to absent from every such encounter. That is why complete awareness of the variety of feelings and attitudes that may surface in a multicultu...