Editorial: inspiration from psychotherapeutic practice and supervision in Asian cultures

Abstract

Greetings! Welcome to the second issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy in 2021! This is a collection of counselling and psychotherapy-related studies specific to Asian cultures, including Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, China, Taiwan, and Singapore. In this issue, we bring a series of impressive articles that cover topics including therapeutic alliance, assessment approaches, strength-centred therapy and supervisory identity development. A good collaborative relationship between client and therapist, i.e., therapeutic alliance, plays a crucial role in therapeutic outcomes. Lek Hon Edmond Pong, Raysen Cheung and Calvin Kai-Ching Yu examine the predictive powers of clients’ personality traits, affective attributes, relationship security, and expectations on therapeutic working alliance in the Hong Kong Chinese context. They propose a model which comprises three factors including relationship insecurity, caring, and client involvement. Hopefully, counsellors and psychotherapists can attain insights on building up a good therapeutic alliance with clients in Chinese context. In building up a therapeutic relationship, a deep understanding of clients is crucially important. There are many effective ways to acquire such understanding. Many psychological professionals use psychological tests or psychometric scales to explore clients’ personalities, emotional functioning, and thinking patterns. The Rorschach Inkblot Test is a projective psychological test, which can be used for this purpose. James Yu and Queenie Lee argue that a lifeworld assessment approach allows collaboration between client and therapist to explore life themes and personal meanings of the assessment data. They innovatively integrate this approach with the use of the Rorschach Inkblot Test for the purpose of initial therapeutic exploration. The key assessment process is illustrated with a child case in Hong Kong. Authenticity can be used as one of the indicators of a person’s psychological wellbeing. Piyanjali de Zoysa, Shamala Kumar, Santushi D Amarasuriya, and Navneth S R Mendis discuss their application of the Sinhala version of the Authenticity Scale to undergraduate students in Sri Lanka. Their results elucidate how the construct of authenticity can be appropriately and effectively operationalized and assessed; and how authenticity may vary as a function of gender and faculty of study. They discuss the potential use of the Sinhala version of the scale. The authors observe higher authenticity in females than in males. This reminds therapists to consider gender-related factors in counselling sessions. Jonah Li and Joel Wong propose that strength-centred therapy can be a positive and culturally flexible therapeutic approach for Chinese clients. They explore the compatibility of strength-centred therapy with Chinese virtues and Chinese indigenous ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY 2021, VOL. 12, NO. 2, 109–110 https://doi.org/10.1080/21507686.2021.1966889