Continuing the Cultural Liberation and Transformation of Counseling Psychology

The multicultural movement has been and continues to represent a major force that is transforming the mental health professions. The field of counseling psychology has been particularly important in promoting many of these transformative changes. Over the past three decades, multicultural advocates in counseling psychology have expanded our knowledge of and lobbied for the implementation of more culturally responsive research methods, clinical practices, and professional training strategies. These collective efforts are significant in that they have helped to liberate counselors and psychologists from the intellectual incarceration (Parham, 2002) and monocultural ethnocentrism (Sue & Sue, 2003) that limit and distort how many mental health professionals think about human development in general and counseling and psychotherapy in particular. The intellectual incarceration and monocultural ethnocentrism that have been (and in many instances continue to be) perpetuated in the mental health professions are fueled by a cultural hegemony that has a pernicious psychological and spiritual impact on millions of persons from racially diverse groups in contemporary society (D’Andrea et al., 2001; West, 1999). Multicultural counseling theorists, researchers, practitioners, and faculty members in our professional training programs have helped many mental health professionals and students in graduate training programs to move beyond the kind of hegemonic thinking that fosters a myopic view of human development and psychological helping strategies. Efforts to liberate the mental health professions from their own cultural encapsulation (Wrenn, 1962, 1985) and monocultural knowledge base (Sue & Sue, 2003) require a disciplined and ongoing commitment to uncover how the cultural hegemony continues to manifest in our research methods, psychological theories, and training endeavors. By continuing their commitment to expand knowledge in counseling and psychology, multicultural advocates also help to dismantle the various forms of racism and White supremacist thinking that continue to be perpetuated in our society in general and the mental health professions in particular (Neville, Worthington, & Spanierman, 2001).