Question 5: Culture & Psychotherapy Flashcards
Practicing with Cultural Competency
Normality is culturally dependent and is to be understood in cultural context.
Benefits client who is culturally different from you, gender, sexual orientation, relgion, ethnic background.
Requires awareness of own assumptions, values, biases, and that of the client
Understanding and addressing power differentials – asking if you feel comfortable speaking with a white therapist.
Tailoring therapy to be most effective with client’s unique cultural norms
–e.g. Some cultures find excessive eye contact or questioning intrusive
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
Structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world.
• US has over 2000 words to describe emotions, Malaysians have 7
• This does not mean we are more emotional, emotions are felt, only described differently.
• Some symptoms exist in specific cultures and not others.
o Koro, Malaysian emotion described as sudden intense anxiety that sexual organs will recede into body and cause death.
o Schadenfruede, German feeling of happiness in another’s pain. We simply just don’t have a word for it, though it certainly is felt by us at times.
o Polish has no word for disgust.
Dervishes of Kurdistan
Stark contrast to western ideas of normality
Culture is intertwined with religious beliefs that we may label extreme and abnormal.
Ceremonies which include self injurious behavior seen as a symbol of status and commitment, even a privilege, granted by the sheik. To describe this as abnormal would be shortsighted and western-centric thinking.
• Eating glass
• Licking hot coals
• Piercing face
Naikan Therapy – Tanaka-Matsumi
Japanese self observation method
Goal: to restore the person’s positive interpersonal relationships with a hierarchal Japanese social structure
Client gives instructions to recollect favors given to client by significant others, especially mother.
Over 100 hours of recollection, over 15 hours/day
• Successful in japan but not here.
• Used in treatment of delinquent and alchoholic Japanese youth
