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Race is an elusive, perplexing,
troubling, and enduring aspect of life in the United States. Race
has been a critical factor in the economic, social, and political
structure of American society from its pre-colonial beginnings to
the present. Any examination of American social history points to
the legacy of America’s fascination with skin color, case, and
social status. Race and beliefs about race have had crucial effects
on the course of American history.
Yet, despite the central and enduring significance of race in North
American society, psychology, psychiatry, and mental health disciplines
relegate race to, at best, a marginal status in models of human
development and in treatment approaches. According to the traditional
psychotherapeutic perspectives (psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, humanistic,
behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, and integrative
models), it seems that race is considered only when a person of
color brings it into treatment.
More often than not, race is thought by mental health professionals
to be an unimportant aspect of personality development and interpersonal
relationships. Consequently, how race influences the therapeutic
process is not well understood by psychological theorist, clinicians,
and clinical scholars. Race as a personality and treatment factor
has, at bet, been treated as marginal.
Race has many dimensions and levels of complexity. When analyzing
race’s impact on the development of an individual, the examination
becomes complicated and often unyielding.
This book is an attempt to connect racial and cultural psychology
with the psychotherapeutic process. I try to balance the various
levels of complexity that seem to impinge on how race affects the
therapy process; and struggle with how much emphasis to give historical,
socioeconomic, sociopolitical, intra-psychic, and contemporary events
are related.
To solve this I provide some historical information concerning
race in American society and then discuss the history of race in
mental health assessment and treatment. I also describe the traditional
models of psychotherapy that were used to characterize and explain
human and personality development and to guide treatment, and also
how these approaches addressed race. Race in psychotherapy is salient
as it relates to client referral, descriptions, conceptualizations,
patient-therapist dynamics, and treatment planning. Against this
background I also descript the current state of knowledge pertaining
to race in psychotherapy and point to its limitations, including
many mental health professionals’ tendency to avoid race or
to argue that race is les salient than ethnicity or culture.
Race has been and is the variable that matters most in this country.
This text is written from a Race-based approach which contrasts
with the Universal, Ubiquitous, Traditional and Pan-national perspectives.
A Race-based approach assumes that the experiences associated with
the belonging to a racial group transcends/supersedes all others
in the US; and is predicated o the belief that race is perhaps the
most visible of all cultural differences and on America’s
history of racial segregation and racism. In this country, race
has been and continues to be the ultimate measure of social exclusion
and inclusion, because it is a visible factor that historically
and currently determines the rules and bounds of social and cultural
interaction.
The Universal approach’s main assumption is that your experiences
and identities are minimally derived from our reference groups (e.g.
race, gender, age, religion); is the foundation for many traditional
psychological theories and practices, and its primary benefit is
that it reminds us that all human beings not only have many common
characteristics and attributes. This orientation also downplays
the significance and impact of North American sociopolitical history
and inter-group power dynamics on one’s personality by positing
that all group membership is equivalent.
The Ubiquitous approach proposes that any human difference (e.g.
race, income, level, sexual orientation) can e seen as cultural,
and people and belong to multiple cultural groups which are situationally
determined. The advantage of this approach is that social group
differences are not seen as pathological, so consequently it ignores
or denies the histories of various groups and their inter-group
dynamics, and tends to minimize the importance of different reference
group memberships by conceptualizing them as equal.
The Traditional approach is anthropologically based and equates
culture with country, using a combination of common language, kinship,
history, values, beliefs, symbols, and epistemological constitutes
a culture. Therefore, culture is not a matter of social differences
or domains of difference, because one is a member of cultural group
by birth, upbringing and environment. According to this approach,
domains of difference (e.g. gender, social class) exist, but do
not solely constitute the cultural experience.
Finally, the Pan-national perspective, posits that racial group
membership determines culture regardless of geo-social contingencies.
This approach deems European and American culture as antithetical
to non-European culture; and sees White (European) culture as violent,
with colonialism and slavery as their legacy, with a consequence
of white oppression that is alien from themselves and their original
culture.
One might argue that, in part, race has become less salient because
mental health clinicians, scholars, and researchers are more comfortable
examining presumed cultural and ethnic issues than addressing racial
issues. Many writers seem to suggest that race is included within
analyses and explanations of culture and ethnicity. I contend that
race is not understood when culture and ethnicity are assumed to
encompass racial issues.
I believe it is essential to have a psychotherapeutic model hat
includes, race. Recently, theories of racial identity development
have emerged and seem to be the only psychological models of within-racial-group
variation. The strength of these theories for racial/ethnic people
(i.e., Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, and Indian) is that they provide
a framework for conceptualizing individual differences in the context
of race and, through race, culture. Racial identity theories suggest
that people’s racial identities vary – this is, how
and to what extent they identify with their respective group(s)
– and that a person’s race is more than his or her skin
color, or physical features. Moreover, racial identity theories
posit that a person’s resolution is psychological and it seems
to guide that person’s feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and
level of investment in his or her racial group’s cultural
patterns. The integration of (*1) some traditional psychotherapeutic
principles, (2) the basic tenets of the racial identity theories,
and (3) the research generated by these theories results in a Racially
Inclusive Model of Psychotherapy that can be used to guide clinical
practice and training.
I argue that race and racial identity (i.e., an individual’s
level of psychological maturation associated with his or her racial
group membership) are integral aspects of personality and human
development. TO support my contention, I present models of racial
identity for all racial-ethnic group people – those who are
classified as belonging to a visible racial-ethnic group (i.e.,
Asian, Indian, Hispanic, and Black/African Americans), Bi-racial
people and Whites, who typically deny or avoid race as a personal
and group characteristics. Furthermore, I argue that racial identity
has a powerful effect on psychotherapeutic interactions on a covert
and an overt level. I describe how, in therapy, each participant’s
racial identity and worldview combine to form particular types of
relationships that result in varying processes, such as therapist
and client strategies, affective responses, and outcomes. Lastly,
I include empirical evidence to support my contentions. The combination
of the elements described above forms the basis of the Racially
Inclusive Model of Psychotherapy. This model is built on the notion
hat race is psychological factor, not just a social or cultural
factor, and, from this perspective, weaves together racial identity
theory and the therapeutic interaction model.
Part of this book is developed to describing empirical studies
that validate the notion of variable psychosocial resolutions within
racial groups where each resolution operates as a racial worldview.
Two research studies are presented as evidence for some propositions
of racially inclusive model. One study investigates how racial identity
resolutions affect psychotherapy process in racially similar and
mixed therapy pairs. A second study explores the notion that participants’
racial identities, rather then their race, exclusively, combine
to create four distinct types of therapeutic relationships. Lastly,
four case studies are presented where the overt psychotherapeutic
processes and the racial identity dynamics are examined. The research
part of the book is offered to validate the models presented and
discussed as well as to demonstrate how race and racial identity
appear in therapy exchanges, presenting problems, and therapeutic
interventions.
I believe that racial issues in psychotherapy are complex and have
been reduced historically to somewhat simplistic explanations. I
think racial issues should be understood in all their complexity.
So the intent of this book is to help people understand the complexities
of racial issue within helping relationships. I believe that a racially
inclusive model will allow readers to come away with a way to understand
racial issue sand to use this understanding in clinical work. Armed
with theory research evidence, and clinical applications, readers
will be able to incorporate their new knowledge and insight into
clinical practice.
The intention of this book is to first, fill a void in the social
science and mental health literature by presenting a theoretical
model about how psychotherapy and counseling processes are influenced
by race. And second, there is a need to advance our understanding
of the complex. Mutual influences involved in interactions. This
is accomplishing by using research to examine the interplay of race
in the counseling process and its outcome. The use of research to
test a theory about racial dynamics in therapy can help clinicians
move away from speculation, and it can promote effective prevention
programs and treatment strategies in mental health and educational
practice. Lastly, as a catalyst for schools, researchers, and practitioners
to think more about the complex psychotherapeutic dynamics that
occur as a result of race.
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