Different stories : multicultural issues in the training of clinical psychologists

Despite an ever-growing body of international literature on multicultural counselling or psychotherapy, comparatively little has been written on multicultural counselling in South Africa, or the need to train South African clinical psychologists to work in a multicultural milieu. My own experience of the training course in clinical psychology at the University of Cape Town was that there had been very little formal or informal discussion of multicultural issues in counselling. Considering South Africa's multicultural population, I wondered whether we had been sufficiently equipped to work with a culturally, racially and socio-economically diverse clientele. Seventeen clinical psychology interns at the University of Cape Town were interviewed to find out their perceptions of this aspect of the course. A qualitative, ethnomethodological approach to the study was taken. A semi-structured interview schedule was used so that the interns' responses could be explored further. Analysis of the data was guided by social constructionist and discourse theory. The interns felt that it had been difficult to talk about multicultural issues during the training. Their reasons for this are discussed in the light of a politically motivated preference for talk about similarities rather than differences between people. Recommendations are made for an awareness component in the training to increase sensitivity among interns to their own biases and prejudices, and to their cultural heritage; and for a multicultural perspective to all training in counselling and psychotherapy.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Psychology

Year dc:date.issued

1995

Author dc:creator

• Ahrends, Ilse

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Swartz, Sally

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13459

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13459