Thrice over the fire: some reflections on contact, culture, context, and whiteness

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article aims to provoke thinking about whiteness, culture and identity in relation to psychotherapy practice. The writing concludes with a poem that situates the author within an enriched environment that includes her ancestors and cultural heritage. Poetry illuminates hard to reach places, surfacing lived experiences that might otherwise hide in their everydayness. For the white therapist a poetic imagination might bring whiteness forth from invisibility, laying it bare for closer inspection, facilitating greater understandings and openness. The author, a white therapist and researcher, uses poetic inquiry, to foster an enhanced cultural awareness with a view to seeing self and ‘other’ afresh. The article invites the white person-centered therapist to engage with their own self-understandings to facilitate enhanced cultural engagement, sensitivity and awareness.