Psychotherapy should be…
“an opportunity for the client to work towards living in a way he or she experiences as more satisfying and resourceful...the counsellor’s role is to facilitate the client’s work in ways which respect the client’s values, personal resources and capacity for choice within his or her cultural context.” (BAC, 1998: 8)
Born in Hong Kong and having grown up out here, in classrooms, and birthday parties that looked like the United Nations, I am very familiar with, and respectful of, cultural differences. For that reason when I first started out I was keen to practice a style of psychotherapy that could be used cross-culturally.
In retrospect, experience with a huge variety of multi-cultural clients has taught me that we are all different in ways so much more varied then on just a cultural level. The common question should really be how are we to adjust to living in a world where we are all unique and different from each other. Not just our cultural or ethnic or racial differences should be factored in, but also our differences in gender, class, sexual orientation, family background, life experiences, etc., etc., the list is endless.
The facilitation of a more self-differentiated individual through exploration and education fits my criteria well as it avoids all attempts to judge or analyze, but instead empowers the client. It supports the theory that individuals are unique and it is the client’s actual experience that is important, not the counsellor’s interpretation of it.
In fact it’s a person's subjective view of the world that’s more important than objective reality (what the person thinks is happening to him, rather then what is really happening). Carl Rogers, the founder of the Person-Centered approach felt that as long as the counsellor could provide the right climate (or conditions), the client had the capacity to understand himself and resolve his own problems.
