Contributing to the Ongoing Evolution of the Multicultural Counseling Movement: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

The multicultural counseling movement has taken center stage in the counseling profession. In doing so, it has revolutionized the ways that counselors have traditionally been trained to think about mental health, psychological disorders, and the types of helping strategies that result in positive counseling outcomes when working with persons from diverse cultural groups and backgrounds. Contributing to the rise of this revolutionary force within the profession is the steady increase in the number of publications related to a broad range of cultural factors. These publications have greatly expanded counselors' knowledge of the relevance of many cultural issues for the work that they do. Five main themes have emerged from these publications, which have helped to increase counselor educators' and practitioners' 1. sensitivity to the significant ways that cultural factors affect human development, 2. awareness of the competencies they need to acquire to effectively promote the healthy development of persons from diverse cultural groups and backgrounds, 3. thinking about types of professional training strategies that help foster the development of culturally competent counseling professionals, 4. knowledge of a broad range of research findings relevant to multicultural counseling, and 5. understanding of the present and future challenges that the counseling profession faces within the context of a society that is undergoing a rapid transformation in its racial/cultural demography. In 1991, the Journal of Counseling & Development (JCD) contributed to the emergence of the multicultural counseling paradigm by publishing a special issue that addressed a broad range of topics and issues in this area. The 1991 special issue on multiculturalism was edited by Paul Pedersen, a leading multicultural pioneer. Seventeen years later, JCD has again taken the initiative to update the profession on the state of the multicultural counseling movement by publishing a second special issue on multiculturalism. We are honored to have had Pedersen serve as one of the reviewers of the manuscripts submitted to this special issue and are grateful for his expert consultation on this project. We are also very appreciative of the ongoing support that A. Scott McGowan, the editor of JCD, has consistently provided from the planning of this special issue to its final publication. Without his ongoing support, this special issue would not have come to fruition. The present special issue on multiculturalism builds on the important contributions of previous publications in a number of ways. First, the reader will note that the authors commonly use the terms multicultural/social justice counseling and a multicultural/social justice perspective instead of multicultural counseling and a multicultural perspective, respectively, in many of the articles presented in this issue. In doing so, they remind us that the multicultural counseling movement has traditionally been grounded in efforts to foster a greater level of social justice for the millions of persons from marginalized and devalued groups in our society. The social justice underpinning of the multicultural counseling movement has occasionally been understated over the past several years. We are grateful to the authors for directing the reader's attention to this important aspect of the multicultural movement in their articles. …