Counseling Across Cultures: A Half-Century Assessment

Abstract

As the Special Issue of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology celebrates the 50th anniversary of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP), this article aims to summarize and track the development of counseling and psychotherapy in cultural contexts over the past half-century. When the edited volume, Counseling Across Cultures (CAC) first appeared nearly half a century ago, it sent an innovative message that culture matters in counseling and psychotherapy. The CAC editors produced six more updated editions in the succeeding years by 2016. The CAC authors examined the cultural context of accurate assessment, meaningful understanding of culture-relevant concepts, and appropriate interventions in each of the seven editions. They have surveyed universal and cultural aspects of counseling and psychotherapy according to such themes as emic and etic approaches to models of mental health, therapeutic relationships and techniques, assessment and interventions, and training needs against the IACCP’s ever-growing academic and professional activities. Research on the cultural adaptation of specific psychotherapies for specific clients should enhance access to culturally sensitive and evidence-based assessments and interventions. The need for training in multicultural awareness is expected to accelerate in the age of rapid globalization. This article affirms the contribution of the foundation-building approaches of CAC and the need for developing the interface between cross-cultural psychology and related clinical and counseling fields.