Why do we fail to adapt to a different culture?

Modern psychological and psychotherapeutic methods arose in Europe and America in the late 19th-early 20 centuries on the basis of «Western philosophy» that rooted in Renaissance. Historical, social and cultural development of Europe has enabled principles of individualism, democracy, socialism and equality. As a consequence, such concepts as self, self-realization, selfidentification, self-mastery and so on emerged and evolved in psychology.

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2018

Psychotherapy models, some of which now have a history over a century, have been practiced worldwide. However, considering that the most prevalently applied psychotherapy models are the products of Western culture, questioning the extent of these models’ effectiveness and efficiency for people belonging to diverse cultural backgrounds is legitimate. No doubt, ethno-cultural groups living in Western multicultural societies will interact with Western culture more deeply compared with people living in non-Western countries; therefore, to also think that their needs will differ is reasonable. In this case, the quantity and quality of the required adaptations may also change. Although a promising number of studies exist on intercultural adaptations necessitated by the needs of multicultural societies, the literature on the effectiveness of these models in the non-Western world and the local psychotherapy models is quite limited. One important question is whether psychotherapy models can ...

Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft, 2018

This article will demonstrate the functionality of Positive and Transcultural Psychotherapy in different transcultural environments. The article will present the psychodynamic, humanistic and integrative approaches to situations in which transcultural questions are the point at issue. The article will show how a psychotherapist, though deeply-rooted in the Oriental, Ottoman culture, can merge the knowledge and experience garnered from this Oriental environment with the scientific advances of the occident to resolve these problems. Works from both of these cultural traditions will be cited and illustrated.

Almost half of Australia's people have non-English speaking backgrounds, but psychotherapy remains geared to the mainstream and ignorant of the stamp of culture. In this lecture, based on 35 years' experience as a psychotherapist-anthropologist in multicultural Australia and Cambodia, I will consider some of the cultural cornerstones of psychotherapy such as attachment theory, loss and bereavement; sanity and madness; the biological basis of mind such as cultural neurosciencje; excavations of mind, especially dream analysis; local notions of cause and effect such as contagion; structures of emotion such as anger; idioms of distress as seen in dissociative states; the preternatural, shown in possession states and demonology; family therapies withi ancestors; local forms such as traditional healing or religious interventions; and evil as manifested in wholesale violence against women and children. A culturally responsive psychotherapy allows the clinician to identify what matters to the patient as a participant in multicultural Australia and in a global world.

Applied and Preventive Psychology, 1996

The purpose of this article is to present an integrative model of cross-cultural counseling and psychotherapy. Illustrated by a series of critical incidents, it is argued that unidimensional models of cross-cultural counseling and psychotherapy are inherently limited. Using Kluckhohn and Murray's tripartite model of personality, an integrative, sequential, and dynamic model of cross-cultural counseling is advanced. Support for the validity of the Kluckhohn and Murray model is first reviewed. This is followed by a delineation of the components of the current integrative model: (a) Outgroup homogeneity effect, (b) Cultural schema theory, (c) Complimentarity theory, (d) Science of complexity, and (e) Mindfulness. The operation of this model is described in a series of figures and the implications for counseling practice and future research is discussed.

American Psychologist, 1987

This article examines the role of cultural knowledge and culture-specific techniques in the psychotherapeutic treatment of ethnic minority-group clients. Recommendations that admonish therapists to be culturally sensitive and to know the culture of the client have not been very helpful Such recommendations often fail to specify treatment procedures and to consider within-group heterogeneity among ethnic clients. Similarly, specific techniques based on the presumed cultural values of a client are often applied regardless of their appropriateness to a particular ethnic client. It is suggested that cultural knowledge and culture-consistent strategies be linked to two basic processes--credibility and giving. Analysis of these processes can provide a meaningful method of viewing the role of culture in psychotherapy and also provides suggestions for improving psychotherapy practices, training, and research for ethnic-minority populations.

Reviews the book, Archaeology of Psychotherapy in Korea: A Study of Korean Therapeutic Work and Professional Growth by Haeyoung Jeong (see record 2015-06147-000). This book is a good example of the collision of Western mental health perspective with a non-Western culture. In this work, Jeong documents the development of mental health ideas and practices in Korea from ancient times to the present. While her examination of pre-Western psychotherapy in Korea does provide useful material about specific traditional Korean mental experiences and “folk” psychotherapeutic practices for the Western trained psychotherapist, her examination of the development of Western-based psychotherapy in Korea is often only a listing of which Korean practitioner brought this or that therapy to Korea. Unfortunately, this book fails to describe how Korean practitioners have understood Western mental health concepts or how these concepts have affirmed or challenged Korean ways of thinking. To the extent that mental disorders are influenced by cultural and societal factors and cultures are becoming more international, the need to have transcultural dialogues is imperative. In the developing international culture everyone can benefit from some sort of meaningful mental health transcultural dialogue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)

2007

Abstract Psychotherapies are distinguished from other forms of symbolic healing by their emphasis on explicit talk about the self. Every system of psychotherapy thus depends on implicit models of the self, which in turn, are based on cultural concepts of the person. The cultural concept of the person that underwrites most forms of psychotherapy is based on Euro-American values of individualism.

Despite the growing awareness of cultural differences and the challenges of multicultural counseling, critics have noted that understandings of culture within psychology remain largely cursory. Philosophical hermeneutics help to remedy this situation by offering a comprehensive theory of culture that (a) details how the self is embedded in culture, (b) highlights culture's inherently moral nature, and (c) shows how cultural conflict be can be mediated through dialogue. Hermeneutics provides a means of thinking interpretively about cultural meanings and discerning their specific manifestations. It can be utilized by psychotherapists not only to help understand clients from different cultural backgrounds but also to better recognize how the dominant Western cultural outlook-individualism-influences psychotherapy theory, research, and practice.

Transcultural psychiatry, 2006

call creolization the meeting, interference, shock, harmonies and disharmonies between the cultures of the world. .. [it] has the following characteristics: the lightening speed of interaction among its elements; the awareness of awareness: thus provoked in us; the reevaluation of the various elements brought into contact (for creolization has no presupposed scale of values); unforeseeable results. Creolization is not a simple cross breeding that would produce easily anticipated results.' (Edouard Glissant, 1997) The practice of psychotherapy depends on a fund of tacit knowledge shared by patient and clinician (Frank, 1973). Intercultural work challenges this shared 'assumptive world' and poses problems of translation and positioning, working across and between systems of meaning and structures of power that underpin the therapeutic alliance and the process of change. The encounter of patient and clinician from two different cultures is not simply a matter of confrontation or exchange between static systems of beliefs and values. Once viewed as self-contained worlds of meaning, cultures are now seen as systems of knowledge and practicesustained by cognitive models, interpersonal interactions, and social institutions-that provide individuals with conceptual tools for selfunderstanding and rhetorical possibilities for self-presentation and social positioning. Moreover, cultural worlds are open-systems, shaped by forces of migration, globalization, and hybridization (Hannerz, 1996; Papastergiadis, 2000). This flux destabilizes old values, identities and ways of life