Ethnic and Cultural Diversity:

Within the past decade, feminist therapists have successfully taken a leadership role in challenging the traditional and inherent prejudice and discrimination concerning women in psychotherapeutic counseling theory and practice. As progress is made in research, theory, and practice affecting the mental health of women in therapy, more complex issues emerge. This paper will focus on the issues of ethnic and cultural diversity, as it applies to women of color seeking therapy.     

Diversity and Complexity of Religion and Spirituality in Iran: Relationships With Self-Compassion and Self-Forgiveness

This study examined religious-spiritual types in Iran by comparing seminary and university students on self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and other measures of religious and psychological functioning. Islamic seminarians (N = 198) more frequently self-identified as both religious and spiritual or as religious only. University students (N = 302) more commonly described themselves as spiritual only or as neither spiritual nor religious. The both religious and spiritual type was highest in religious commitment, self-compassion, and psychological adjustment, with the neither religious nor spiritual type tending to score lowest. The religious-only type displayed the lowest self-forgiveness. Seminarians were also lower in self-forgiveness, but otherwise higher than university students in their mental health. In correlations, self-compassion was compatible, but self-forgiveness was incompatible with Muslim commitments. Muslim spirituality moderated Muslim attitude relationships. These data documented the diversity and complexity of religion, spirituality, and perspectives on the self in Iranian Muslims.     

Group Psychotherapy in the Context of Cultural Diversity

The authors review the salient issues involved in therapy with culturally diverse populations. They present a framework where group therapy addresses those issues. Clinical vignettes from each of the authors serve to illustrate the power of group therapy with ethnocultural populations.     

Valuing Values: Better Public Engagement on Nanotechnology Demands a Better Understanding of the Diversity of Publics

As public attitude research evolves, often becoming more complex and variable, we are coming to understand that public attitudes are also more complex and variable than can often be captured by a single opinion poll, and more sophisticated forms of analyses are needed that look not just at a breadth of attitudes, but at a breadth of publics. The Australian Department of Industry undertook a public attitude study in 2012 that was not only longitudinal, looking at changes in attitudes towards nanotechnologies, but also looking at the values or worldviews that influence attitudes. The findings allowed for a segmentation of the public, into four key segments, with distinct homogenous attitudes. This allows for not just a deeper understanding of the diversity of views that exist and the worldviews that influence them, but challenges engagement practitioners to ensure they have a broad representation of participants with different attitudes and do not favour one or two segments only.     

Spirituality as a Cultural Asset for Culturally Diverse Youth in Urban Schools

Spiritual issues are culturally important for many youth in urban schools. In this article, the authors describe how spirituality is associated with cultural values, mental health, coping strategies, and adjustment among culturally diverse youth. Using the case of a 17‐year‐old Samoan high school student, the authors demonstrate how spiritual issues related to faith, meaning making, and cultural identity can be addressed in a school counseling context.     

Spirituality: The Emergence of a New Cultural Category and its Challenge to the Religious and the Secular

The present article examines spirituality as an emergent new cultural category that challenges the binary opposition of the religious and secular realms of life. The article probes the cultural significance of the popular phrase ‘spiritual, but not religious’ and examines the emergence of New Age spirituality within the framework of late capitalism and postmodern culture. It offers a new perspective on the debate of the secularization theory and re-examines the notions upon which this debate hinges. The article also examines the assessment of New Age spirituality as disguised neo-liberal ideology and proposes that the disparaging condemnations of contemporary spirituality can be seen as a response to its challenge to the entrenched notion that the religious and the secular are universal distinct categories.     

Educating Beyond Cultural Diversity: Redrawing the Boundaries of a Democratic Plurality

In this paper I draw some distinctions between the terms “cultural diversity” and “plurality” and argue that a radical conception of plurality is needed in order both to re-imagine the boundaries of democratic education and to address more fully the political aspects of conflict that plurality gives rise to. This paper begins with a brief exploration of the usages of the term diversity in European documents that promote intercultural education as a democratic vehicle for overcoming social conflict between different cultural groups. In contradistinction to these usages, this paper calls for a more robust conception of plurality, one that does not simply denote membership in different cultural groupings but is rooted in the human condition and based on a conception of uniqueness. Following the work of Hannah Arendt and feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, I explore how the appearance of unique beings in specific contexts can be understood as an eminently political act and I contend that such a view leads to a better educational understanding of conflict and contestation. The paper sketches the contours of democratic plurality along this line of thought and discusses how these new boundaries have implications for education’s relation to democracy.     

Experiencing the Other as the Self: Cultural Diversity Courses as Liberating Praxis

Abstract. In response to our increasingly global and multicultural world, undergraduate degree plans have come to include courses, which meet the Diversity requirement. While diversity may have a variety of definitions, clearly the educational institution believes that all students earning a degree should complete course work that exposes them to cultures not their own. Courses that fulfill Diversity requirements often include “Introduction to World Religions,” among others. Even a traditional‐style teaching of such a course will accomplish a certain degree of broadening of students’ perspectives. The risk, however, is that at the end of the course the students are simply better informed about sets of people whom they would still objectify as the other. This article describes an experiential method of teaching which enables students to begin to change their consciousness, as well as their body of information, by learning to experience the other as self. The author calls this the identification/participation method.     

Scratching the Surface: Internationalization,Cultural Diversity and the Politics of Recognition

Within recent years a number of scholars have called on the discipline of psychology to expand beyond the confines of Western society in an effort to address a range of issues in an increasingly interconnected and multicultural world. While scholars interested in the internationalization of psychology have addressed both organizational and representational issues surrounding the development of a global psychology, there has been relatively little effort to understand the theoretical dimensions of internationalization. To the extent that contextualist challenges to universalism focus exclusively on ethnocentrism, these challenges fail to adequately interrogate the economic foundations of internationalization and globalization. Ultimately, a politics of recognition must be balanced with a renewed focus on the redistributive dimensions of social justice.     

Introduction to the Special Issue: Toward Diversity and Cultural Competence in Genetic Counseling

This introduction provides an overview of the professional issues and original research papers in this special issue. The articles address workforce challenges and/or cross-cultural education and communication with culturally and religiously diverse clients. Additional suggestions are made for moving the profession of genetic counseling toward diversity and cultural competence.     

Spirituality and Community in Times of Crisis: Encountering Spirituality in Indigenous Trauma Therapy

Pastoral Psychology - On May 12, 2008, at 2:28 pm, an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale struck Southwest China, with its epicenter in Wenchuan. The earthquake destroyed about 6.5...     

Spirituality and Well-Being in Old Age: Exploring the Dimensions of Spirituality in Relation to Late-Life Functioning

A growing body of research connects spirituality with positive late-life functioning. In this research, spirituality is often approached as a single measure in relation to well-being, neglecting its complex nature. Therefore, this study explores whether different dimensions of spirituality contribute uniquely to psychological well-being in advanced age. Results indicated that well-being was positively predicted by spirituality experienced through connectedness with the transcendent and through connectedness with others. Spirituality experienced through connectedness with nature did not predict well-being. These findings highlight the unique influence of each spirituality dimension on well-being as well as the need for a multidimensional approach.     

Family Bereavement and Cultural Diversity: A Social Developmental Perspective

This article offers an integrative, interdisciplinary model of bereavement as a family developmental process that unfolds in cultural context. A critique of cultural assumptions highlights the culture-bound nature of prevailing North American practices, which view grief as an isolated individual experience and emphasize detachment from the dead as a way to promote recovery. Death and grief precipitate two kinds of family change, both guided by culture yet uniquely experienced and interpreted by individual families: 1) recreating the family without a key family member; but capable of coping with both existing and new tasks; and 2) incorporating the death into an ongoing but irrevocably altered family life-cycle developmental process. In supporting family change after a death, family therapists need to collaborate with grieving families in examining the goodness of fit between their unique circumstances and the bereavement expectations of their community and culture. Four case examples are presented, two of which will apply this social developmental model to emphasize transformations of attachment to the deceased — rather than detachment — that will support the ongoing family development of grieving families.     

Spirituality and Multimodal Therapy: A Practical Approach to Incorporating Spirituality in Counseling

The purpose of this article is to describe how the dimension of spirituality can be added to an existing counseling theory, multimodal therapy (MMT; A. A. Lazarus, 1984), to provide counselors with a practical approach to incorporating clients' religious and spiritual beliefs in the counseling process. An explanation of MMT is given, as well as its supporting research. The context of spirituality in counseling is discussed, and the process by which it can be integrated into the MMT model is explained. Two case studies are described to demonstrate how spiritual issues can be assessed and used to strengthen the counseling process. Finally, implications for counseling are discussed.     

Spirituality in Counselor Training: A Content Analysis of Syllabi From Introductory Spirituality Courses

The authors discuss the results of a content analysis of 14 syllabi of introductory courses on spirituality in counseling. Course syllabi were examined to determine trends in the content of these courses and to determine if the instruction is consistent with 9 competencies developed at the Summit on Spirituality. Results suggested that there was substantial variance in the extent to which the competencies were covered in the syllabi. The authors discuss implications for teaching courses on spirituality in counseling.     

Managing Cultural Diversity: North-American Experiences and Suggestions for the German Unification Process

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the usefulness of thinking of assimilation and multiculturalism as strategies for managing cultural diversity. The illustrative case is Germany and its recent unification. These contrasting strategies have been most extensively explored in North America, and these experiences are reviewed through a discussion of the different forms that assimilation and multiculturalism take and the psychological underpinnings each involves. The recent shift in emphasis from assimilation to multiculturalism in Western societies is highlighted, leading to the conclusion that a fundamental contradiction exists between the ideals of meritocracy that pervade these societies and the ideals of collective multiculturalism.