Ethical Counseling in a
Multicultural Society
Important terms
• Culture = the belief system and value orientations
that influence customs, norms, practices, social
interactions, including psychological processes
(language, care taking practices, educational
systems) and organizations.
• Culturally diverse clients = clients from any
group that has suffered discrimination and
oppression.
• Multicultural (cross cultural or transcultural)
counseling = counseling situation in which the
cultures of the client and the counselor differ.
Important terms
• Multiculturalism = “social-intellectual
movement” that promotes the value of diversity
as a core principle and insists that all cultural
groups be treated with respect and as equals
• A minority group = a group that has suffered
discrimination – usually smaller in size and
power than a majority cultural group (but not
necessary to be small in number but in terms
of access to power and history of oppression).
Ex. Women..
Multicultural Counseling: Promoting Client
Welfare
• In ACA Code of Ethics, preamble, it states: ACA
members recognize diversity and embrace a cross-
cultural approach in support of the worth, dignity,
potential, and uniqueness of people within their social
and cultural contexts.
• Under section “the counseling relationship”, it identifies
responsibility to nondiscrimination, appreciation of
cultural differences in implementing informed consent
and confidentiality procedures…
• When counselors behave in a biased or mono-cultural
way, they are serving their own needs, not the clients
needs.
Some points to ponder…
An example of cultures dimensions: the emphasis on
individual autonomy in the western societies is much
less dominant in the eastern cultures which give primacy
to well being of the cultural group or the family.
Therefore there is a critique of the ethics code that gives
emphasis on respect for the autonomy of the
individuals/clients..
How to respond when the situation of the client seems
to compromise his or her personal freedom and dignity,
yet is encouraged and condoned by his or her culture?
Example… What is your choice?
Some points to ponder…
What is the ethical choice when a client’s culture
refuses to allow girls to seek high education?
Or your client wants to be freed from his or her
culture that practices caste/class?
Foster and James (1996) gave their opinion to deal
with these issues:
counselors must avoid both ethical absolutism (a
rigid, dogmatic adherence to a particular set of
ethical values) and ethical relativism (an equal
acceptance of all ethical values)
Some points to ponder…
Instead they recommend a middle position that allows for
diversity in values but is not so relativistic as to deny the
existence of any universal human principles.
Fischer, Jome and Atkinson (1998) agreed with the above as
they viewed multicultural counseling as a “universal healing
process that takes place in a culturally sensitive context”
They suggested counselors to focus to the common factors
that make therapeutic process effective which are a strong
therapeutic relationship, a shared worldview, a client with
expectations of positive results from counseling and a set of
interventions that both parties accept as healing/take effect.
Some points to ponder…
Two extremes to be avoided by counselors in
multicultural counseling:
a. The failure to include culture in the therapeutic
process and to understand the interaction between
individual characteristics, cultural norms, values and
practices and societal and global forces.
b. The failure to acknowledge intra-cultural variations
and individual differences. Example…
c. Cultural traditions must also be seen as hypothetic
influences on individuals until evidence shows that
they are operative – be balanced, don’t overemphasize
or ignore cultural influences. Example…
Multicultural Counseling Competencies
Counselors need to have competencies as follows to
conduct multicultural counseling:
1. An attitude of “openness” toward other cultural views
of life/world:
Understanding the influence of your own culture on
your own self development, values, beliefs, social
behaviors is a prerequisite for this attitude
Without openness, counselors may push clients toward
a particular decision/action – in the end the counselor
have to remember, it is the client who must live with
the consequences, not the counselor.
Multicultural Counseling Competencies
2. Knowledge of the specific culture:
Ignorance of common cultural phenomena
can cause the counselor to misdiagnose the
problem
Knowledge of the culture is crucial especially
when clients are torn between following their
culture norm and breaking off in a different
direction
Multicultural Counseling Competencies
3. Competent in involving other support people
from the culture:
Sometimes counselor need to call family
members, close relatives, influential figures
from the client’s cultural society
Counselors should know how to seek support
for themselves through consultation with
peers or knowledgeable people about the
culture
Multicultural Counseling Competencies
4. Counselor must also know how to modify interventions to
suit for cross-cultural counseling:
For instance in adapting traditional methods for effective
interpersonal communication in the context of the culture
involved.
5. Counselors must also develop a tolerance for ambiguity
and divergent views of right and wrong
Accepts the fact that others do not have the same
philosophy, worldview or system of morality
Must be able to tolerate the discomfort caused because of
this different opinion/beliefs