The self in guidance: Assumptions and challenges

The assumptions of the self made in the professional and managerial discourses of guidance are examined. It is suggested that these assumptions obstruct the capacity of guidance workers to explain their own practices, mystifying the social, economic and cultural processes of which they are part. This is important for two reasons. First, unquestioned assumptions can result in claims for guidance being made which are misleading. Second, if those assumptions are part of the professional formation of guidance workers, there may well need to be changes made to training programmes. Drawing on contemporary debates over identity, modernity and postmodemity, the case is made for a more explicit and informed debate about the self in guidance     

Choice and self-expression: a cultural analysis of variety-seeking

Three studies examined whether the tendency to seek variety in choices depends in part on cultural assumptions of choice and uniqueness. Study 1 showed that people from different cultures where different assumptions of choice and uniqueness dominate show different levels of variety in their choice rule use. Study 2 primed participants with magazine ads highlighting different representations of uniqueness dominant in individualist versus collectivist cultures to show the influence of cultural meanings of uniqueness on the variety-seeking tendency. Study 3 manipulated the motivation to display variety to demonstrate that variety-seeking in the United States partly hinges on cultural meanings of choice as self-expression. Variety-seeking in choice rule use was eliminated when participants had the chance to self-express through choice listing. The research illustrates the role of cultural assumptions in the variety-seeking tendency.     

The Cultural Context of the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics

The American Counseling Association code of ethics was constructed in a particular cultural context and reflects the assumptions of that context. Beginning with a discussion of the purposes served by ethical codes, I review 3 patterns of implicit assumptions: (a) examples of implicit cultural bias, (b) examples of cultural encapsulation, and (c) examples favoring the dominant culture. Positive recommendations for developing more inclusionary ethical guidelines are discussed on the basis of case examples and the consequences of good or bad ethical practice. The need to make underlying philosophical and cultural assumptions explicit in the Preamble to the code of ethics is clarified.     

Some cultural factors in counsellor functioning in Nigeria

Some aspects of the cultural context within which counselling has to operate in Nigeria are discussed. The discussion reveals some cultural assumptions that often go unquestioned in Western counselling practice. For counsellors in Western cultures, these and related issues may be particularly relevant when counselling members of ethnic minorities.     

Negotiated nonmonogamy and male couples

One issue that has the potential to confound family or couples therapists working with male couples is the issue of nonmonogamy. For many therapists, sexual nonexclusivity challenges fundamental clinical assumptions that "affairs," or extra-relationship sex or romantic involvements, are symptoms of troubled relationships and are always a form of "sexual acting out." This article explores the issue of sexual exclusivity and nonexclusivity within male couples. In order to achieve both clinical and cultural competency in work with male couples, therapists need to challenge their cultural biases regarding monogamy.     

The Challenge of Cultural Blindness: Implications for Family-Focused Service Delivery

When dealing with culturally diverse families, special education professionals need to be aware of the challenge of cultural blindness and acknowledge the cultural assumptions imbedded in the services they offer. Using data from qualitative interviews with Native American mothers and participant observations of a parent support group on their reservation, I analyze the implications of cultural blindness for the empowerment of minority families.     

Terrorism,Identity, and Public Order: A Perspective From Goffman

From Erving Goffman's (1971) dramaturgical perspective, terrorism is interpretable as an indicator of, threat to, and frame for understanding public order. Public order emerges wherever strangers commingle. It is a foundation for social order more generally. Dramaturgically, public order is underwritten by inferences about strangers' identities based on appearances writ large. Those inferences in turn are warranted by moral assumptions that actors are who they appear to be and that apparent actors will act in dutiful ways that sustain selves and their meanings in the situation and into the future. These assumptions are warranted by the trust that persons in a common space bestow on each other. Terrorism violates the trust, moral assumptions, and identity inferences. As such, it generates an identity transitivity that weakens public order and threatens the security of identities in public space. The issue is to share cultural assumptions of self as inviolable and of appearances as trustworthy to warrant public order.     

The King Is Dead; Long Live the King: Narrative Therapy and Practicing What We Preach

Narrative therapy has been associated with the assumptions of postmodernism and social constructionism; both of which support the notion that there are no truths, just points of view. Thus, narrative therapists have sought to privilege the voices of their clients in the process of delivering them from the oppressive weight of dominant, cultural grand narratives. Have they been as willing and adept at respecting the voices of other professionals, and their colleagues within the narrative camp? This question is discussed in relation to the underlying assumptions that inform narrative practice. It is concluded that narrative has perhaps unwittingly fallen prey to the human tendency to reify metaphors and make gurus of leaders.     

Tho Press Release: Symbolic Communication In Life History Interviewing

ABSTRACT This study describes and analyzes the apparently misleading, irrelevant, and sterotyped initial self-report statements that were obtained in an in-depth multiple case study of women changing careers Using assumptions from the fields of hermeneutics (interpretation) and phenomenology about how meaning is constructed and interpreted, these initial accounts are understood as symbols which can be decoded and can also reveal larger meaning when read in different contexts This study shows how these accounts concealed connections between current behavior and personal history and prevented appropnate refer-ence to personal expenence. The reasons for these distortions are understood by placing them in a sociocultural context These women's initial accounts are interpreted as a response to their perceived violation of cultural mandates preventing development of work roles The damaged symbolic language they used to explain themselves is seen as an example of mistaken cultural assumptions about the “self” The demonstrated necessity of interpreting these initial accounts as symbolic communication alerts researchers relying on self-report statements to the pitfalls of taking such statements at face value     

Academic Integrity from China to the United States: The Acculturation Process for Chinese Graduate Students in the United States

The ethics-related beliefs of Chinese international graduate students are heavily influenced by their academic cultural background, and given the nature of that culture, they often face challenges when adapting to the U.S. academic environment. This qualitative study examines Chinese graduate students’ perceptions of the differences between Chinese and American academic integrity practices and the effects of those differences on their ethical practices and adaptations in a graduate program in the United States. Data were collected via semistructured interviews in a public university in the United States. Findings suggest that perceptions of academic integrity in Chinese universities are influenced by Confucian philosophy, collectivist assumptions, and a resultant convenience mind-set. These cultural premises clash with academic expectations in the United States. Participants describe how they, and their Chinese peers, navigate U.S. integrity standards and provide recommendations for ways that U.S. schools can help them better adjust. We expand on those and provide recommendations for university personnel.     

Training Therapists to Be Culturally Sensitive with Asian American Women Clients

SUMMARY

We describe here a developmental sequence of three key training experiences that contribute to developing cultural sensitivity for clinicians who are not of Asian heritage and are working with Asian American women. The sequence reflects and illustrates our guiding assumptions for developing multicultural sensitivity, including an emphasis on cultural self-awareness and a reflexive approach to knowledge acquisition and clinical practice. Effects of these training experiences are illustrated through three case examples of therapy with Asian American women written by an African American male and two European American female therapists at different stages in their training.     

Recent trends in cultural theories

Multiculturalism is probably the most important and most misunderstood psychological construct of this decade. This article identifies specific and uniquely valuable contributions of a multicultural perspective and demonstrates the importance of multicultural awareness training as a primary prevention strategy, directed toward preventing multicultural misunderstandings before they happen by training mental health providers to become more aware of their culturally learned assumptions and the contrasting cultural contexts of their clients. The development of recent multicultural theories will be reviewed to demonstrate how the definition of cultural theories have changed over time toward a broader and more complicated perspective. Finally practical applications of culture-centered theories will be reviewed through the presentation of a Cultural Grid for separating behaviors from expectations in each cultural context.     

Assessing relationship quality across cultures: An examination of measurement equivalence

Researchers are increasingly studying close relationships across cultural contexts. One issue that arises when applying scales originally developed in Western countries to a different cultural context is measurement invariance. Researchers often do not examine whether scales show invariance across cultures and thus can be used with confidence. The goal of this article is to discuss the importance of measurement invariance, to discuss what testing invariance involves, and to test the measurement properties of scales of relationship satisfaction, commitment, intimacy, and trust across 4 samples (United States, Canada, Indonesia, and China). Analyses indicated that weak measurement invariance was met for all 4 scales, and assumptions of strong measurement invariance had to be relaxed for only a few items in each scale. Findings are discussed and recommendations are made regarding using these or other scales that have been shown to meet assumptions of invariance across different cultural groups.     

Theory and Practice: Assessing the psychological presentation of gifted and talented clients: a multicultural perspective

Researchers suggest that gifted individuals have both strengths and areas of intrapersonal and interpersonal concerns as a result of their talents. The purpose of this paper is to apply a multicultural model of psychological assessment, the Multicultural Assessment Procedure (MAP), to better understand the social and emotional needs of gifted clients. This application is based on the following assumptions: a) giftedness is a sub-culture, b) people with special gifts also identify with and operate in multiple cultural contexts, and c) in order to be effective in working with gifted clients, one must accurately understand the interaction of the client’s multiple cultural identities. Implications for counselling practice are discussed.     

Therapeutic practice in multi-racial Britain

Service planners and providers of mental health services (including therapy and counselling) claim that their services are being restructured so as to become more sensitive to the needs of users—irrespective of race and cultural background. This paper is one step towards that goal. It aims to (i)challenge assumptions and beliefs held by mainly white, mainstream therapists and counsellors; (ii) question the therapeutic practice which is based on white, middle-class ideology; (iii) raise awareness of a ‘black’ perspective in therapy and counselling and (iv) provide some practical guidelines for transcultural counselling.     

A cross-cultural examination of proximity and hierarchy as dimensions of family structure

Meaningful cross-cultural application of family therapy theories requires that basic assumptions about normal family functioning be made explicit, and contextual factors be incorporated into the theories. Guided by this understanding, this article examines the family structure dimensions of proximity and generational hierarchy theoretically and empirically. These dimensions and their superordinate construct, boundary permeability, are analyzed in terms of their underlying assumptions. The cross-cultural validity of the dimensions is assessed using videotaped interactions, projective drawings, and interviews with a sample of 24 Turkish families. Results indicate that proximity is a valid dimension, moderated by the demographic variables of socioeconomic status (SES), mother's working status, family size, and clinical status. Hierarchy is not a valid dimension because the cultural norm of strong hierarchy suppresses variation. The implications for the cross-cultural transfer of family therapy theories are discussed.     

Modernist Creativity and the Construction of Reality in Einstein and Kandinsky

In this article, I limn the remarkable ascent of Albert Einstein and Wassily Kandinsky into our cultural pantheon. I depict how both figures mastered and transcended their respective fields, and how they called into question long-established disciplinary assumptions and practices. I also demonstrate how the creative works of Einstein and Kandinsky constructed, and were constructed by, the reality we now call “modern.”