An Organizational Framework for Understanding the Role Of Culture in Counseling

Literature on cross‐cultural counseling has emphasized differences between groups and the need to develop culture‐specific techniques. Lacking a coherent conceptual framework, this focus has done little to improve the status of multicultural training in counseling programs and has not had a positive impact on the quality of service delivery to minority clients. The authors propose an alternative direction for cross‐cultural training and research. Building on work in transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy, they delineate a conceptual model that provides an integrative framework for understanding the role of culture in counseling.