ral counseling setting is so important.
As a group the counseling disciplines have addressed a variety of issues relating to issues of diversity that inform the contemporary helping-profession environment. Codes of ethics have evolved over a fairly long period of time in response to changing social, professional, and political priorities, but obviously a first principle of client welfare drives the formal protocols of ethics in all of the professional associations. Such differences as there are arise chiefly in emphasis, having to do with the particular subject areas of though certain differences of substance can also be discerned. For example, the American Counseling Association (ACA) and American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC) focus chiefly on client welfare (ACA FAQ, 1999), while the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) sees counseling in part as a religious ministry whereby members "apply the message of the Gospel to his or her professional or pastoral service" (CAPS Statement, 1999). AAPC's members, comprising certified mental health professionals who have also received in-depth spiritual training, are not expected to impose sectarian beliefs on clients. Because of the changing racial demographics of universal public education in the US, owing to significant increases in immigration from Latin America, even educational and career counseling has felt the need to give more attention to changes in cultural cues given and received by clients (Coy, 1999).
The whole range of associations and attitudes associated with the presence of such terms as diversity and multiculturalism has the potential to complicate the psychotherapeutic context. Chodoff (1996) cites a range of perils attendant to it, such as the unavoidable creation of a power relationship between expert therapist and client, however much the expert may wish to engage in client-centered interventions on the basis of mutual trust and respect. T...