Promoting Cultural Relativism in Counselors through the Cultural De-Centering Model

Abstract

Counselors who are culturally encapsulated are likely to create client mistrust and to misinterpret clients’ cultural norms. This article presents the Cultural De-Centering Model (CDCM) as a constructive-developmental method for helping future counselors to be less ethnocentric in their work. The goal of the CDCM is to increase counselors’ cultural relativism. Through the CDCM counselors are asked to name and challenge their assumptions about race/ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social class. They are then asked to re-examine the foundations of those assumptions and begin constructing culturally de-centered perspectives.

Appendices

Appendix

Cultural De-Centering Inventory - 1

Walt Whitman, the nineteenth-century American writer, wrote, in his poem ‘Leaves of Grass’:

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church [or at home] or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Whitman encourages us, in a sense, to have a self-authorized (Kegan 1982) vision of what we believe and value, a vision based on careful consideration of what matters to us, and a consideration of the broader implications of those beliefs.

In regard to culture, that “poem” might be translated as your ability to both question what you received about culture and construct a culturally inclusive perspective. In this vision of the self-authorizing person, all cultural conventions are treated as social constructions; that is, creations of a community at a particular time and place. They can then be examined for their origins in a particular historical, political, or cultural context. Then we can ask the questions of our assumptions, values, beliefs, and behaviors: Do they still work? Do they help? Whom do they serve? What shall I discard and/or reclaim? What new, more multicultural perspectives might I take?

In order to claim, or reclaim, your cultures, and perhaps move closer to “self-authorizing” them, try this activity. It may take several months or more of searching, questioning, and re-examining for you to self-authorize your cultures. Once you have begun the work on achieving “critical consciousness” and your own capacity to self-authorize, you, as a counselor, will be better able to consistently act in a socially critical fashion with both individuals and organizations.

• Directions for Column 1: Received Views

In the boxes below, name some strong, deeply held beliefs, values, or customs that you were taught through home, school, or religion in each of the categories. These beliefs, values, or customs may or may not be ones that you currently hold. Write one for each category. Put them in Column 1 in your own words.

• Directions for Column 2: Alternate Perspectives from Received Ones

In the second column, “Alternate Perspectives,” write an alternative belief, value, or custom for each box; one that differs from the one that you were taught. (For example, boys might have been taught that men should be the primary income provider for the family. An alternative perspective is that men can be stay-at-home dads.)

• Directions for Column 3: Current Views

In the third column, describe your current perspectives. What do you think now in each area? It can be the same, slightly different, or very different from the perspectives in columns 1 and 2.

• Directions for Column 4: Basis for Views

In the fourth column, write your reasons for each of your current perspectives. What has contributed to your current beliefs? How strongly do you adhere to these beliefs?