COUNSELLING in CULTURAL and SPIRITUAL DIVERSITY

This book presents an approach to counselling with clients who experience tension between their post-modern world views and some elements of their African traditional cultural millieux. Since the 1880’s African traditional cultural systems and practices have been subjected to the eroding influences of Western socio-cultural-spiritual ideologies and value systems through colonisation, Christianity, Western-style education, the monetary economy, the effects of technological and digital ages. The result of that psycho-spiritual onslaught is that some of the people find their sense of being shaped by the different and sometimes conflicting world views. Inability to reconcile these two loci of being produces tension that sometimes causes psychological problems. Such issues do not surface easily and neither do existing counselling books address them, hence the need for this text.The book proposes a way of working with such clients to help them find psycho-spiritual harmony. Borrowing heavily from the cognitive behaviour approaches, the author proposes combining the Rogerian conditions of worth with Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy to help the clients think through their issues and come to a resolution that works for them. The content for much of the text is derived from the author’s doctoral thesis. The book should be found useful by counsellors, counsellor-trainers, priests/pastors, social workers and others in the field of mental health. Read more