What Do White Counselors and Psychotherapists Need to Know About Race? White Racial Socialization in Counseling and Psychotherapy Training Programs

Multicultural training in academic counseling and psychotherapy programs is often designed to address the needs of minority populations, and it rarely places Whiteness in the spotlight. Its structure, in fact, risks mirroring the very dynamics embedded in White privilege. Using the framework of feminist theory, we build on key findings on White racial socialization—which has a profound impact on the quality of communication and interaction within and across racial groups—to outline the skills and awareness needed for White counselors and psychotherapists to promote racial justice in both their individual/counseling and community/advocacy work.     

Ergebnisqualität von psychotherapeutischen Prozessen mit Jugendlichen

Background

This study investigated the effectiveness of therapeutic processes with adolescents depending on (1) the quality of the therapeutic relationship, (2) generic change indicators and (3) the appearance of specific forms of communication in the initial phase of therapeutic processes. The study concentrated on investigation of the first three initial therapy sessions and was interested in the possible association of these three variables with positive outcomes and in the young patients remaining in therapy.

Material and methods

A total of 20 therapeutic processes, which took place in Santiago de Chile, were examined. Participants were 15 female and 5 male adolescents between 13 and 17 years old and suffering from different psychological disorders. The Chilean version of Horvath’s working alliance inventory, Generic Change Indicators, the Therapeutic Activity Coding System (TACS), Lambert’s outcome questionnaire OQ-45.2 and adherence in terms of completing or not completing therapy were used to assess process and outcome variables.

Results

The three variables measured in the initial phase of therapy with adolescents, i.e. therapeutic alliance, generic change indicators and communicative actions showed a relationship with the therapeutic results in terms of adherence to therapy as well as outcome.

Discussion

The results indicate the necessity of a greater inclusion of the perspective of adolescents in the therapeutic process.

     

Letter‐case information and the identification of brand names

A central tenet of most current models of visual‐word recognition is that lexical units are activated on the basis of case‐invariant abstract letter representations. Here, we examined this assumption by using a unique type of words: brand names. The rationale of the experiments is that brand names are archetypically printed either in lowercase (e.g., adidas ) or uppercase (e.g., IKEA ). This allows us to present the brand names in their standard or non‐standard case configuration (e.g., adidas , IKEA vs. ADIDAS , ikea , respectively). We conducted two experiments with a brand‐decision task (‘is it a brand name?’): a single‐presentation experiment and a masked priming experiment. Results in the single‐presentation experiment revealed faster identification times of brand names in their standard case configuration than in their non‐standard case configuration (i.e., adidas faster than ADIDAS ; IKEA faster than ikea ). In the masked priming experiment, we found faster identification times of brand names when they were preceded by an identity prime that matched its standard case configuration than when it did not (i.e., faster response times to adidas ‐adidas than to ADIDAS ‐adidas ). Taken together, the present findings strongly suggest that letter‐case information forms part of a brand name's graphemic information, thus posing some limits to current models of visual‐word recognition.     

Coparenting Profiles in the Context of Mexican‐Origin Teen Pregnancy: Links to Mother–Daughter Relationship Quality and Adjustment

The current study explored the multifaceted nature of the mother–adolescent coparental relationship with data from 167 Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers and their own mothers at 10 months post childbirth. Profiles of mother–adolescent coparenting were created with latent profile analysis using adolescents’ reports of three dimensions of coparenting (communication, involvement, and conflict). Four profiles were identified: (a) Harmonious Coparents (equal involvement, high communication, low conflict); (b) Harmonious‐Adolescent Primary (adolescent is more involved than mother, high communication, low conflict); (c) Conflictual Coparents (equal involvement, high communication, high conflict); and (d) Conflictual‐Adolescent Primary (adolescent is more involved than mother, moderate communication, high conflict). Families characterized by high mother–daughter conflict and psychological control prior to childbirth were more likely to belong in the Conflictual Coparents profile. In addition, adolescents’ and mothers’ depressive symptoms and parenting efficacy after childbirth were linked to profile membership, such that the Harmonious‐Adolescent Primary profile reported the most positive adjustment patterns, whereas profiles with high coparental conflict (i.e., Conflictual Coparenting and Conflictual‐Adolescent Primary profiles) showed the least positive adjustment patterns. Discussion considers the applied implications of identifying precursors to healthy and problematic mother–daughter coparenting for families of adolescent mothers in the early years of parenting.