Cultural babel: the challenge of immigrants to the helping professions.

Abstract

Immigrants to the United States often experience sociocultural stress not easily mitigated by the culturally individualistic and Western endopsychic probing methods of therapy. The vast majority of immigrants hold communal attitudes and holistic beliefs, whereas American therapists use treatment methods that endorse self-sufficiency and individualistic values. Parsimonious, psychoeducational, and less ego-threatening strategies are proposed--supportive, directive, didactic, and reality-oriented approaches that are consistent with the treatment perspective of immigrant populations that commonly hold collective rather than individualistic views. The proposed goal of intervention is to help immigrants become bicultural citizens, by enabling them to adopt American coping skills without surrendering those of their own culture.