Cross-Cultural Counseling

by Aart van Beek

For the busy pastor, this volume outlines sensitivities, awarenesses, and skills fundamental to this type of helping process. Issues such as identity, sense of belonging, worldview, identification, family counseling, and use of biblical resources are discussed and illustrated with a wide variety of vivid cases.

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 1996

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had important things to say about cultural differences, identity formation, sense of belonging, and worldview. My major takeaway was to be sensitive to the ways that I prioritize certain values (like individual expression) over others (like group harmony) and to recognize the culture which taught me these value judgments. This book helped clarify for me that the role of the counselor is to help people function better in their own world, not mine. The reason I didn't rate it higher is that van Beek pissed me off several times in his value-laden judgments of Western culture. It might be that he felt freer to dis his own dominant culture (I believe he is a Westerner) but either way, it offended me that in a book about cultural sensitivity, he wasn't. The point shouldn't be to raise one value over another, but to accept diversity without judgment.