This volume uses my fascinating therapeutic encounters to help clinicians understand and respond to the needs of their increasingly diverse clientele. My hope is to capture the intimate and exciting nature of the therapeutic session. Emphasizing the importance of balancing general cultural awareness with a consciousness of openness and curiosity, I urge clinicians to look beyond their assumptions and stereotypes to learn their clients’ cultures through eliciting key narratives.
Keeping the client and therapist center stage, I show the complex ways in which their cultural self-narratives interact. I attempt to integrate a constructivist narrative approach into multicultural counseling that teaches about culture through its manifestations in the particulars of individual lives—both that of the client and counselor. I try to describe openly the nature of the learning that occurs for the therapist.
My aim is to provide a balance to approaches that either deny culture’s importance or over-emphasize generalizations and stereotypes. I regard all counseling as multicultural, and “multicultural counseling” involving a consciousness rather than a set of skills or general guidelines based on stereotypes.
Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
Published by: Teachers College Press, 2002
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Multicultural Encounters transports readers into the inner world of the client, taking us on a multicultural journey where issues of race, culture, and ethnicity are revealed as dynamic and powerful dimensions of human existence . . . this book is truly revolutionary.
Allen E. Ivey and Derald Wing Sue
From the Foreword
Readers will be instructed by this comprehenseive, candid, and thoughtful presentation. The author skillfully shows how his own background and ife experiences help him to conduct treamtem. This book is recommended with the greatest enthusiasm.
Chester M. Pierce, MD
Professor of Education and Psychiatry, Harvard University
This book may well become a classic. Murphy-Shigemtsu’s case studies read like stories and are full of compelling insights regarding eh art of therapy.
Gene I. Awakuni, EdD
Vice Provost for Student Affairs, Stanford University
