Culturally Alert Counseling: A Comprehensive Introduction - Softcover

McAuliffe, Garrett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1412910064 ISBN 13: 9781412910064

Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

A comprehensive, readable introduction to the cultural dimensions of counseling and psychotherapy is now available. National leaders in each topic have been selected to provide an accessible, yet thorough, presentation of culturally alert counseling. An introduction to the nature of counseling and culture begins the book, followed by chapters on Social Inequality, Race, and Ethnicity. The succeeding chapters reveal the characteristics, histories, mental health issues, and appropriate counseling strategies for each of eleven cultural groupings. The book ends with a thorough presentation of actual culturally alert counseling practice, Seven dimensions combine to make the book unique, namely thoroughness, inclusiveness, theoretical foundations, practicality, readability, activity, and modeling. In the first case, this book broadens the discussion of culture from ethnicity and race to include social class, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Of particular note, in the area of ethnicity, all five of the major U.S. pan-ethnic groupings are presented, as well as Middle Eastern and South Asian people.The book is also inclusive of all people, including both those in dominant and non-dominant cultural groups. The assumption is that everyone has culture. Culturally alert counseling is also theoretically grounded in the first few chapters of the book, which lay out a guiding developmental vision of culturally alert counseling. Further conceptual foundations are laid in discussions of social inequality, social justice, social diversity, and critical consciousness. The practical dimension of the book is underscored by the inclusion of a chapter devoted to actual culturally alert counseling skills, an area that is needed by practitioners in this important work. Readability and interest are enhanced by the interweaving of case vignettes and experiential activities throughout the book. Finally, culturally alert counseling skills are modeled in an accessible, vital demonstration video that accompanies the book. Ultimately, readers will leave informed, moved, and changed by the encounters with culture that lie in these pages. They will also be ready to begin practice equipped with both a vision of the work and practical skills in implementing it.

About this title

About the Author

Garrett McAuliffe has worked as a counselor educator, counselor, and school teacher for over 35 years. His commitments have always included ensuring equity in society and teaching so that learners might be empowered. Toward those ends, he has taught in the public schools of New York City and counseled on the community college and university levels in Massachusetts, where he also served as the Director of Learning Assistance Programs at Greenfield Community College. Since 1988, he has been a counselor educator at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. His work has been dedicated to improving the lives of all learners. He is the grandchild of Irish immigrants. He grew up in a tightly connected extended family in a multi-ethnic neighborhood in New York City. He received his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in English Literature, with Highest Honors, from Queens College of the City University of New York, in 1971. He was named to Phi Beta Kappa for his academic performance at Queens College in 1971. He took from his undergraduate education both a love of ideas and words as well as a desire to turn ideas into social and personal change actions. Toward that end, he pursued his graduate counseling studies at the University at Albany and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, receiving his doctorate in 1985. In his time at Old Dominion University he has produced five books, over forty articles, over 25 book chapters, and two training videos. His great love continues to be teaching, in all of its forms.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1412910064
• ISBN 13: 9781412910064
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 688