Abstract
This study endeavors to unearth the role, place and challenges of narrative theory in multicultural counseling. Practically, narrative theory approach is used therapeutically in a process of breaking down and reconstruction of meaning to the problems experienced by use of small build up pointer questions asked by the narrative theorists to the patient.
The motivation in this study is to formulate working pointer questions which can easily differentiate various cultures so as to enable the counseling of various patients according to their various cultures.
The major problem encountered in this study is the formulation of appropriate pointer questions that would have an indicative feature according to religious, sexual orientation culture which cannot be easily physically seen. The approach to be used is to go to the different cultures and find key differentiating cultural norms that will then be used to formulate the questions to be used in the narrative theory approach.
The resulting questions will then be incorporated into the counseling process and will act as beacon to indicate what approach to use in order to counsel the patients appropriately according to their different cultures.
Narrative Theory in Multicultural Counseling
As the counseling world has begun to incorporate culture during diagnosis and therapy of clients, the field of counseling and psychology needed new approaches to counseling and also began a search for theoretical models that could provide a culturally sensitive methodology of counseling. Narrative theory is one such model that has emerged and has continued to provide counselors with the necessary schematics. Narrative theory in itself is not yet completely fool proof since it is based on a comprehensive understanding of the importance of culture in the identity of the individual.
Sue in her book counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice with John Wiley & Sons tackles some of this limitations and assumptions in her book while digging further into Alan Parry and Robert Doan, in their book, Story revisions: Narrative therapy in the postmodern world. (Sue2012). The main assumptions made with narrative theory are;
There is no real truth, only different interpretations of reality that we create or tell ourselves and therefore, what becomes most important is meaning, which scientifically speaking is constructed in social, cultural, and religious contexts.
All people on narrating a story are able to create meaning. People live their lives according to the stories they tell themselves and stories others tell them.
a common culture is a collection of common people and stories. Their stories therefore i.e. their culture influences their lives greatly.
everybody has different stories or narratives and therefore there is not one knowable self but many selves in one person I.e. one is modeled by many stories into the character they are.
The person is never the problem. The problem is the problem - and the problem is to be found in the story, not the individual, and finally culture is complex but not chaotic.
Identification of Cultural Differences and Importance of Narrative Theory in Multicultural Counseling.
a. Advantages and disadvantages of narrative theory in multicultural counseling.
These assumptions modified the role of the psychologist from the traditional assess and treat, to more of a curious investigator who allows room for culture to be incorporated in therapy. The assessment process changes focus from the client to the problem the client is facing.
The problem is exposed by the client through externalization during narration; this is accomplished by objectifying the problem the client has. During the narration the psychologist would ask questions such as how the problem is affecting his social, religious, peers and family, thus allowing the client to express their issues through their own cultural ideologies, so that during therapy he may know how to incorporate the clients culture into the treatment bracket while at the same time decreases the risk of cultural misunderstanding.
In the present society diversification of culture and race is happening at such a rapid pace that psychologists and other mental health professionals interact with clients who differ from them socially, culturally and ethnically. And although there is no one approach that will prepare a psychologist adequately to engage in multicultural counseling since most of the current theories of counseling and psychotherapy inadequately address and deal with multiculturalism, narrative theory approach goes a long way to tackle most of the key issues since it is left to the client to narrate his story and his truth. According to (Neukrug 2010) narrative theory approach in multicultural counseling has allowed the counselors to become intuitive in order to understand the problem the client might be facing. It is the most likely choice in multicultural counseling because it provides room for a culturally sensitive context for creating change in a clients' life by helping him/her to deconstruct the old problem story when recreating a new preferred story from his point of view. The psychologist listens to the clients' narration and helps the client notice the problem areas in his life. By listening and recreating the narration with the client, there is decreased chance of the psychologist dominating the client with prejudiced cultural influence of his own; there is also decreased risk of creating cultural conflict or tension.
Narrative theory is a form of theory or rather approach that uses narration as a way to analyze a clients' problem. This form of narration process or story telling leads to empowerment of both the counselor and client to get a clear view of the story, since during the stages of revising the story, by deconstructing and reconstructing it to the counselor, the client undergoes externalization, this allows them both to see the problem i.e. the person is not the problem the problem is the problem. The final outcome of this is the mapping effect. The counselor looks at language and attitude, and cultural ideologies of the client as symptoms of personal problems and takes them into consideration.
According to Corey (2012), narrative theory or approach to counseling therefore creates a means to organize the clients' information, personal, social, cultural, family or economic related issue and aids in the counseling process. In broad prospects its main purpose is to provide an approach system to the counselor for exploring in depth client issues by taking into account cultural expectations, social economic class, gender, and ethnicity issues.
According to Ivey et al (2013), multicultural counseling is a wide range of social variables or differences that exist within a cultural contest and are used in recognizing and counseling individuals. Such social variables include but are not limited to;
Gender,
Sexual preference,
Disability,
Social class,
Age,
Religion,
Ethnicity.
He goes further and argues that; multiculturalism starts with the counselor being aware of differences among the clients and also within them. It is important to understand the culture of the client from which the client hails. Information about typical cultural practices from different ethnic groups can also be useful; also of importance are the further variations within a culture. Take for example, the broad categorization of blacks or "Africans" needs to be broken down further into cultural differences between, African Americans, Caribbean Africans, African blacks and the Papua and other minor island blacks.
They may share a few things in culture and race but they differ greatly in traditions, religion and language. Narrative theory attempts to address this by letting the client tell his story and feelings and in the process of deconstruction and reconstruction his/her cultural ideologies are brought up to the attention of the counselor who will then take it into consideration while counseling him/her to get a solution.
He secondly argues that multiculturalism counseling stresses the importance of family and cultural factors that actually affect the way clients and everybody sees the world. Many cultures if not all have stereotypes regarding gender, the roles that men or women can be allowed to participate in relation to work and family duties or place in community. How people interact is also greatly influenced by culture and family ties. Years of influence by such stereotypes lead to them being inculcated into everyday life. It is important to note that these stereotypes vary from culture to culture and what may pass as appropriate in one culture may be dubbed as taboo to the other. Therefore use of narrative theory allows the client to express their ideologies in a narrative way and this allows the counselor to gauge what is appropriate in the clients' culture and counsels the client appropriately by incorporating the clients' ideologies on culture during therapy.
Finally the authors go further to argue that; multiculturalism theory stimulates practitioners and counselors to rethink the meaning and methods of counseling and pay more attention to the clients cultural concern as in most cases it plays a role in their problems or in their therapy procedures. Understanding multiculturalism, level of education, family traditions, heritages, economic issues and histories of discrimination and mistreatment can be included during the multicultural counseling process.
It is important to note that cultural identity especially race or rather skin color cannot be taken for granted in the present counseling world. There are different types of clients, some may be ashamed or proud of their cultures; others will try to dissociate from their culture mainly due to stereotypes associated with it while others will stick to it and reject the main stream culture being forced on them by the modern society. A more common situation especially among the young is, they will adopt some values of a new culture while still maintaining the practice of their old cultures.
During counseling of a client from a multicultural population it can be difficult to tell which client is which accordingly and that is where narrative theory comes in. As the client narrates their story the counselor can then pick cues that direct him to know which bracket his client lies.
Narrative theory has provided counselors with a model plan that has spear headed their understanding of the numerous and complex issues that face the diverse multicultural population. Narrative theory has an advantage of providing the counselors with a culture sensitive framework from which they can then be able to give counsel that takes culture of the client into consideration during therapy.
According to Diaz-Comaz (2012), individualism had long dominated the mental health field and was reflected by the counseling process. Take for example if a client saw a psychologist with an issue whether personal or social, it was always assumed that it was only the client who faced the problem even if in some cases, which was most, it was a whole kind of culture of people who faced the problem although in different proportions, since most learning processes and ideology building are cemented in the cultural context. Therefore a culture centred approach had to be created.
Since culture is a dynamic body of entities and keeps changing, it was approached inclusively of everything rather than narrowly. Here is where narrative theory played a role in trying to close the gap in understanding clients' behaviour in a cultural and socio-political context relatively accurately without appearing racist. It provides an almost adequate methodology for incorporating culture in both its qualitative and quantitative elements.
Its other advantage is that over time the counselor increases in self-awareness due to the accumulation of relevant knowledge from the well-developed cultural awareness created by the approach of narration. It is not enough to be aware of the clients' culture narrative therapy also offers an outlet to appropriately apply the skills and perspectives gained from his/her culture during therapy.
According to Corey (2012), narrative theory has the advantage of being used on individuals, couples and families by helping them view their problems in a social, political or cultural perspective (by externalization, which creates a platform of positive interactions and changes negative comments and responses into more positive and accepting, non-biased meaningful communication) by helping them see their own views and personal stories and be the judge themselves without the danger of the counselor appearing culturally insensitive or racial.
This objective viewing of problems by multicultural individuals, couples or families enables them reconnect and view the problem as it is. He further argues that this objectification of the problem reduces resistance from the clients and allows them t to face the issue in a more productive and mature manner.
In order to have a successful counseling process, the counseling approach must be inclusive of the clients' culture, (Pasupathi, Wainryb & Twali 2012). Therefore the counselor must develop multicultural competencies in order to maintain professionalism during the counseling process. The narrative theory approach addresses this important aspect by broadening the counselors' awareness and understanding of the clients' culture during the process of narration and figuring out the problem or main issue. This approach allows the counselor to openly acknowledge cultural differences without appearing rude or undermining the clients' culture, identity, religion or gender. It actually instead shows willingness to learn and accept the clients culture and create appropriate interventions from the part of the counselor.
In counseling without taking culture into the picture, often and do frequently evoke some defensiveness from the clients (mostly true when dealing with clients of different races, who feel they have been historically repressed by other races) this is obviously because peoples culture are an important part of their lives and by itself is naturally a powerful part that they wouldn't want anybody to judge or belittle it (Scholl, McGowan, & Hansen, 2012)). This is true even to those clients who may try to deny their race, religion or gender as a major part that influences their Culture. Narrative theory attempts to address this problem as it helps the counselor not only understand the clients own belief and culture without appearing judgmental, it also helps him or her come to terms his own beliefs and culture. This awareness of culture and beliefs goes a long way in providing effective therapy to the client.
Using narrative therapy may assist the counselor to examine the client and determine if what the client is going through is an individual behaviour or an organizational behaviour, (which in this case are cultural behaviours that may be present among large populations). Normally the influence of organizational behaviour can be easily picked up with an experienced counselor using narrative theory, it's the exploration of personal issues concerning sexism, religion and personal believes that are most importantly facilitated with this narrative theory approach. This information picked from this approach is particularly useful during the therapy process.
Most approaches fail to address collective family, community and individual relationships that exist in any form of society since they take a total individual approach (Neukrug, 2010).This is so wrong in so many levels since man is a social being and is influenced by society and surrounding at many different levels. Narrative theory on the other hand allows space for these relationships during the process of dissociation from the problem hence reducing the danger of the counselor unknowingly or subconsciously filling in the clients account with prejudice from their own culture. At the same time narrative approach allows for the counselor to be aware of individual differences and uniqueness of the client while still exploring at the level of social and cultural ideologies. Narrative approach allows for the counselor to be sensitive to words, body language and other cue's that may be unique to a particular culture and if deemed important he or she can incorporate it during therapy.
Another advantage of narrative theory in multicultural counseling is that it lets the counselor personalize his or her observations about the client and therefore avoid making premature assumptions. The counselor becomes aware of the observations and knowledge about the clients perspectives but keeps them to him or herself and does not generalize the clients. This allows the client to continue with their narration until they are down without any interruptions. The counselor then works with the client to see where the problem might be. Little or no cultural prejudice is experienced by the client from the counselor and therefore preventing the client from going into a defensive state or a very agreeable state to even where their problem does not apply. In brief, this withholding judgment by the counselor allows the sessions to remain objective until enough information regarding the clients' world/culture is gotten and it also allows room for the counselor to react to new different and sometimes unpredictable situations or cultural beliefs without appearing physically perturbed.
Finally narrative theory gives the counselor to feel and express sympathy for culturally different clients (Pasupathi, Wainryb, & Twali, 2012). This is because as the client narrates their story he or she can be able to place himself in the place of the client, in order to understand their point of view. The counselor then gets to express respect to the clients' culture in a way that is human, accepted and appreciated by the client. This doesn't necessarily have to be verbal as it can also be expressed via social cues. This humanly expression and appreciation towards the client is what makes a good counselor to be even a better counselor according to me.
Effects of Narrative Theory in Multicultural Counseling and Conclusion
Narrative theory, therefore, according to me is a good approach to be used consistently while doing culturally sensitive work as a
counselor. It provides a theoretical framework and provides room for inclusion of more and larger systems into the therapeutic process by incorporating the clients' culture, identity and gender issues without appearing overly aggressive. It helps the client and the counselor alike to reconnect and identify with their culture and what they want from it. Narrative theory will also often incorporate culture in the healing process of the client (Nelson-Jones, 2010).
Narrative theory provides a way in which the counselor can address different culture uniquely and yet at a personal level without
appearing judgmental at all. It promotes diversity in society such as different behaviours, family structures and religion of the client. As counselors work in more and more diverse societies, it is being used more commonly because I believe it provides a solid structure that allows each client to tell their stories in whatever way they want and quite effectively. Exploration of cultural diversity using narrative theory allows for appreciation of the uniqueness of each client and the cultures they hail from. The counselor being aware of different cultures allows him or her to differentiate whether a problem is an individual one or a cultural one and therefore allows some room to differentiate what therapy to use during the healing process. Finally the counselor becomes like a researcher and keeps on learning each and every day from his clients and therefore becomes better at what he or she does.