Black Identities + White Therapies

Book excerpt: This vibrant new book springs from the continued failure of the counselling and psychotherapy profession to adequately prepare trainees to meet the needs of today's multi-ethnic, multiracial and multicultural society. The editors, both highly experienced trainers and academics, have gathered together here a group of new and established writers who draw on personal and professional experiences to present an array of fresh ideas and approaches. Their aim is to inform training curricula that would more adequately prepare therapy students to respond sensitively and in culturally appropriate ways to clients of diverse cultural and racial identities. Each chapter presents a challenge to all therapeutic practitioners, whatever their specialist role, to attend to and reflect on their personal and professional attitudes and behaviours in relation to clients of all heritages and origins. Issues addressed include unconscious privilege, 'othering', micro-aggressions, broaching, racism, discrimination, the search for meaning, identity complexity, intersectional understanding, heritage, biases and projections, trauma, intergenerational trauma, introjections, projection and decolonisation of the curriculum. This book is a wake-up call to the profession to develop more inclusive models of theory and practice, and to every counsellor, psychotherapist and counselling psychologist to review their professional practice and ensure a better fit between the aspirations and theories of their professional calling and the needs of our multi-ethnic, multiracial and multicultural society today.