Introduction

On the need to reconcile cultural and professional power in psychotherapy: Humanistic principles that are foundational for feminist multicultural practice.

“…Empowering Clients to be Self-Healing in the Therapy Process via Process Direction Both FM and HT seek to have egalitarian relationships in which therapists value clients' knowledge about their own experiences and contexts, and their involvement in the healing process (e.g., Comas-Díaz, 2012;Hoffman et al, 2020;Morrill & Levitt, 2023;Rogers, 1977). Psychological health is thought to be advanced when clients are encouraged to not only make choices between treatment options, but to define what are valued goals in their own continued development.…”

“…It has been regarded as having a narrow range of cultural applicability, or as representing a form of cultural colonialism and erasure (Reynaga-Abiko, 2020) by not recognizing the debilitating impacts of social injustice on many clients’ lives. Especially over the last 2 decades, however, there have been concerted attempts to integrate an FMT-based critical consciousness into HT approaches (see Hoffman, 2016; Hoffman et al, 2020 for rich descriptions of this history and of early attempts by humanists to center culture). Eminent HT and FMT therapists both have agreed that these approaches can and should support each other because both approaches address forms of power (Brown, 2007; Comas-Díaz, 2012; Comas-Díaz & Torres Rivera, 2020; Greenberg & Goldman, 2008; Hoffman et al, 2015; Jackson, 2020; Jenkins, 1991; Levitt et al, 2019; Morrill, 2021; Morrill & Levitt, 2023; Serlin & Criswell, 2001; Whelton & Levitt, in press).…”

“…Although core FM principles addressing issues of cultural power has been articulated clearly over time by feminist-multicultural psychotherapy researchers and APA task forces (e.g., Arredondo, 1999; Brown, 2018; Calloway & Creed, 2022; Comas-Díaz & Torres Rivera, 2020; Greene, 2004; Sue et al, 2019), the contributions of humanistic psychotherapy have tended to be framed as common factors, present in all therapies and so not deserving of particular consideration, and rarely have been recognized as a critical strategy to addressing professional power. It has only been more recently that therapists have begun the work of integrating the insights and distinctive concerns about power that occur both within HT and FMT (e.g., Comas-Díaz, 2012; Hoffman, 2016; Hoffman et al, 2015, 2020; Levitt et al, 2019; Morrill & Levitt, 2023; Whelton & Levitt, in press). This section reconsiders the issues of professional and cultural power in light of these advances, suggesting that all therapy should be grounded in both sets of concerns.…”

Mindfulness diligence: Supporting the culturally relative self-actualization processes of diverse groups of youth.

“…Humanistic psychology has its foundations in the existential and phenomenological philosophies of the early to mid-20th century, which challenged the reductionisms, fatalisms, and determinisms of Freudian psychoanalysis and behaviorist schools of thought and praxis (Walters, 2008). Furthermore, in the United States, the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s were opening new spaces for human rights, social justice, and ultimately a new school of psychology known as humanistic psychology (Hoffman, Cleare-Hoffman, Granger, & St. John, 2019).…”

“…Together, they can only enhance their effectiveness and gain greater perspective on what it means to be fully human. Multiculturalism was deemed the Fourth Force in counseling and psychotherapy but has been atomized from education and humanistic psychology (Hoffman et al, 2019). Therefore, multicultural humanistic psychology is needed to engage the complexity of multicultural school settings.…”