Integrating Asian Healing Traditions Into Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 2006

Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 2011

Hall, Hong, Zane, and Meyer present mindfulness and acceptance psychotherapies as promising treatment modalities for Asian Americans, address possible cultural discrepancies, and propose to adapt the diverging elements into culturally syntonic ones. In this commentary, we discuss how the heterogeneity among Asian Americans suggests the existence of a wide variation of individual differences despite group similarities. We point out the importance of cultural accommodation in psychotherapy, where the therapist accommodates for differences in beliefs, values, and norms implied in the existing theory. Finally, we propose that the underlying principle of effective psychotherapy with ethnic and racial minority clients is cultural congruence, or identifying and selecting culturally congruent processes and therapeutic elements by incorporating both cultural and individual variations.

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.

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 2003

As the United States population grows more culturally diverse, it is increasingly likely that psychologists will treat patients from dissimilar cultural backgrounds. Psychologists are often undecided about whether it is therapeutically appropriate to address cultural differences. Ten clinical considerations regarding the appropriateness of discussing cultural differences with patients are described. Examples are provided of how these suggested guidelines may apply to clinical practice. The literature that has supported addressing differences, including selected theoretical models, is cited in the context of these recommendations. All psychotherapy cases are distinct; therefore, these general guidelines should be adapted to the requirements of the individual patient. Theoretical Perspectives Cultural differences have been understood through three distinct perspectives: universalism, particularism, and transcendism (Se-MARTIN J. LA ROCHE received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He is currently an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School at the Children's Hospital Boston/Martha Eliot Health Center and is in independent practice in the Cambridge, MA, area. His current areas of research are multicultural psychotherapy and health psychology. APRILE MAXIE received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA. Her current area of research is cross-cultural psychotherapy and treatment-seeking in ethnic minority populations.

Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 1995

Individual psychodynamic therapy, particularly psychoanalytic psychotherapy, is considered ineffective with Asian individuals. I argue that this problem is partially caused by an indiscriminate application of popular psychoanalytic concepts that claim universal application to Asians. I demonstrate this problem using Margaret Mahler's theory of individuationl separation and then offer a reconceptualization of Asians' seeming lack of individuation from the view of contemporary psychoanalytic subjectivity theories. Implications for transference are discussed. I then argue that the Western therapist needs to be aware of his or her Western-culturebased organizing activities and to use a sustained empathic-introspective approach to access the internal experiential world of an Asian client. The fact that Asian-Americans' have high therapy dropout rates has been noted by a number of researchers and clinicians in the field of Asian psychology (Tsui & Schultz, 1985; Sue & Zane, 1987). Psychoanalytic psychotherapy has been Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Kris Yi,

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.

Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 2011

Americans is important because treatment disparities continue to exist for this population. Because of their theoretical grounding in East Asian philosophies, mindfulness and acceptance-based psychotherapies appear to constitute promising ways to provide culturally responsive mental health care to Asian Americans.

Asia-pacific Psychiatry, 2020

Federation of Psychiatric Associations, organizations representing clinicians and academics practicing in the most populous and culturally diverse region of the world. This special issue of the journal is dedicated to transcultural aspects of psychotherapeutic treatments in the Asia-Pacific Rim region, an initiative proposed by the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) as a call for papers to give scholars in the region

Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie, 2003

To provide effective psychotherapy for culturally different patients, therapists need to attain cultural competence, which can be divided broadly into the 2 intersecting dimensions of generic and specific cultural competencies. Generic cultural competence includes the knowledge and skill set necessary to work effectively in any cross-cultural therapeutic encounter. For each phase of psychotherapy--preengagement, engagement, assessment and feedback, treatment, and termination--we discuss clinically relevant generic cultural issues under the following headings: therapist, patient, family or group, and technique. Specific cultural competence enables therapists to work effectively with a specific ethnocultural community and also affects each phase of psychotherapy. A comprehensive assessment and treatment approach is required to consider the specific effects of culture on the patient. Cultural analysis (CA) elaborates the DSM-IV cultural formulation, tailoring it for psychotherapy; it i...

This article is divided into three sections. The first section concerns the diagnosis and assessment of Asian-Americans and covers the following issues: (a) symptom expression, (b) therapist bias, (c) problems with the use of interpreters, and (d) problems with the use of clinical and personality tests. The second section, on counseling and psychotherapy, is divided into three subsections: (a) client variables, (b) therapist variables, and (c) counseling process and outcome. The subsection on client variables covers such issues as the personality of Asian-Americans, language problems, the acculturation process, and counseling expectations. The subsection on therapist variables includes discussion of therapist bias, training bias, lack of intercultural skills, and culture-specific knowledge. The therapy process and outcome subsection reviews empirical studies, clinical case studies, and articles with treatment strategies and recommendations. Research issues as well as research recommendations for each of the areas reviewed are identified and discussed in the third section.

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.

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.

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)

International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2013

Beneath the many stereotypes of Chinese characteristics common in the West, there are complexities of Chinese culture and personality not well understood by psychoanalysts and analytic therapists. Knowing something about these can be critically helpful to Western colleagues who wish to teach effectively in China. This presentation outlines cultural issues concerning Confucian and related values, changes in family and marital structure, changes in the role and practice of sex, the effect of widespread national and individual trauma in China in the twentieth century, and changes in the nature of individualism in Chinese personality. These five factors come to bear whenever Western analysts and psychotherapists teach Chinese analytic therapists and/or treat Chinese patients.