Lindsay Klimik, M.S. a Doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Loyola University Maryland, receives a Presidential Citation for her significant and outstanding contributions as a member of the Division of Psychotherapy’s Task Force on Psychologist Psychotherapists. Also present in the photo presenting the award are Jeffrey Magnavita, Ph.D., ABPP, President of the Division of Psychotherapy (on Left) and Jeffrey Barnett, Psy.D., ABPP, Chair of the Task Force on Psychologist Psychotherapists and Ms. Klimik’s faculty mentor at Loyola University Maryland (on Right).

Click here to review the Task Force Report.

Stephanie is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Counseling Psychology. At present, she is a pre-doctoral intern at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities counseling center (UCCS). In April, she successfully defended her dissertation regarding mental health outcomes for transsexual individuals throughout their transitioning process. As the recipient of the Charles Gelso Psychotherapy Research Grant, she will be conducing three separate meta-analyses regarding the efficacy of research trials for personality disorders. The first meta-analysis will be conducted regarding trials that compared evidence-based treatments to treatment-as-usual for personality disorders. The second meta-analysis will determine differences in efficacy for bona-fide treatments for personality disorders. Last, a cost-effectiveness analysis will be conducted on those trials that have compared treatments for personality disorders.

Please see the awards section of the Division 29 website for more information on the grant program and watch for upcoming details of the call for applications for the coming year’s grant awards. Eligibility for the Charles J. Gelso Psychotherapy Research Grant rotates biannually between graduate students/predoctoral interns and doctoral level psychologists/postdoctoral fellows. In 2011, doctoral level psychologists and postdoctoral fellows will be eligible.

As graduate students we receive training not only in academia but in a myriad of different clinical settings, which often lead to a wide range of experiences in terms of supervision. Because of the emphasis that is placed on clinical/practical training for clinical psychology programs in particular a graduate student’s competencies are strongly related to the quality and type of supervision that he or she receives during practica experiences.  Given this, how important do you think it is for supervisors of graduate students to receive training in the area of supervision?  Should there be specific competency requirements for psychologists or other mental health clinicians who plan to train graduate students?

Jeff Barnett Responds:

This is a really important question. Clinical supervision is an essential aspect of every psychologist’s professional training. We each participate in supervision during different stages or phases of our professional growth and development. Without it, we couldn’t develop the competence needed as professionals. Yet, the quality of the supervision we receive is of great importance. Inadequate, unethical, or insufficient supervision has serious ramifications for our developing competence as well as for the clients to whom we provide professional services.

Competence is generally thought of as being comprised of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, and the ability to implement them effectively. In general, we obtain much of the knowledge we need from academic course work, reading, attending seminars, and the like. We also should be able to obtain additional knowledge from our clinical supervisors. Our skills are developed primarily in clinical supervision. Our supervisors also serve as professional role models; we learn and develop many of our professional attitudes and values from the examples set by our supervisors.

It is essential that supervisors possess two major types of competence; competence in the clinical areas they are supervising and competence in being a supervisor. It is definitely important that supervisors have training in being a supervisor. Like any other clinical role, it has it’s own literature, research, and requisite skills. Merely having been supervised in the past is not a sufficient credential for being a supervisor. Also, just because a job may require a psychologist to supervise a certain number of trainees, that doesn’t mean one is competent to provide the supervision. One must first obtain the necessary training to develop needed competence so that one may provide supervision skillfully and ethically. There are different models of supervision, various methods of supervision, and a number of clinical and ethical issues supervisors should be aware of.

Some jurisdictions require clinical supervisors to have  a certain number of hours of continuing education in clinical supervision for their license to be renewed every two years if they are to provide clinical supervision. That’s a good start, but a minimal requirement. Training programs should require that potential supervisors submit documentation of their training, experience, and competence in providing supervision before being allowed to supervise students. This may involve submitting continuing education certificates, transcripts, a statement of professional experience, and/or letters of recommendation. But, often training programs have a difficult time getting supervisors for their students since the supervisors are often volunteers. As a result, programs may just be glad to get supervisors for students and may not be as careful or thorough in screening potential supervisors. Just as supervisees receive written and verbal feedback throughout the course of supervision, perhaps supervisors should receive written feedback and evaluations from supervisees that are shared with training programs.

There are also many ethics issues that supervisors and supervisees should be aware of. Additionally, there’s a body of research that highlights the qualities of effective and ineffective supervisors (and supervisees!) that both supervisors and supervisees should be aware of. I also believe that there should be an informed consent agreement or supervision contract completed at the outset of the supervision relationship that clarifies all roles, responsibilities, obligations, and the like. These issues and other relevant ones are addressed in the PowerPoint slides below that are from a presentation on the topic I gave recently.

I hope this is helpful. If you have any comments in response to what I have written here or if you have other questions please don’t hesitate to ask. I also welcome others’ comments and questions as well. I wish you much success in your training. A final thought is to keep in mind that as a supervisee, you are an active consumer of a service. You must be provided with the needed oversight, training, supervision, mentoring, and role modeling that are needed for you to flourish and develop as a professional psychologist.

Best wishes – Jeff

Ethical and Legal Issues in Supervision

Click Here To View Previous Questions And Responses

The Division of Psychotherapy is pleased to offer an exciting convention program this year in San Diego!  We want to thank everyone for their fine submissions and let you know that we very much appreciate the time and effort that goes into these. Unfortunately, because of limitations of program hours (based on the number of members in our Division who attend the APA Convention), we are unable to accept all the quality submissions that we would like. Our blind raters work very hard at rating each program and there are many submissions that we hope to see again next year. This year’s program will be exciting and inspiring for both our younger and later career members. Many of the leaders in the field will present their latest thinking, research, and clinical strategies for us to take back to our offices and institutions. We were also able to participate in planning the plenary sessions that APA sponsors, which will be very relevant to psychotherapy.

We are conducting suite programming this year and hope that you will all drop by when you have a few minutes or more to share your experience, to network, and to share some nourishment. We are very excited this year to offer “Brunch with Barnett,” a suite program on psychotherapists’ self-care and life balance on Saturday morning with Dr. Jeff Barnett.  Please check back to our website for greater details and information on registering. We will keep you posted about further suite programming as we go.

Please carefully review our program and highlight those sessions that you want to attend. Don’t forget to encourage early career psychologists and students to attend our “Lunch with the Masters” where there will be copious food and a very popular book raffle. This year, our masters include Drs. Jeffrey Magnavita Judith Beck, Louise Silverstein, Florence Kaslow, and others.

We think there is an abundance of riches here and (unfortunately!) deciding what to attend will be a challenge.

See you all in San Diego!

2010 Division 29 Convention Program

For additional information on these loan repayment opportunities, visit http://nhsc.hrsa.gov/loanrepayment/.

Rachel Gaillard Smook

Michael Constantino

Facilitated by Michael J. Constantino (Early Career Domain Representative) & Rachel Gaillard Smook (Early Career Committee Chair)

Division 29 Early Career Mentoring is a feature on the website of the APA Division of Psychotherapy that provides a forum for asking questions broadly related to one’s early career. Through this interactive column, readers will have a safe place to pose questions anonymously, and to receive feedback from a more senior Division 29 “mentor.” Early career is a time of great excitement, but it can also pose many challenges and give rise to many questions. We suspect that if a question is on the mind of one early career psychologist, it is probably on the minds of others. Thus, we hope this column provides a useful and far-reaching service to our early career constituents. To this end, mentors will be assigned to field questions based on their specific expertise and experience, and the column will evolve into bank of queries and replies.

Post A Question Below (Write Anonymous for “Name” If You Wish Your Question to be Anonymous).

Click Here to View Previous Columns and Postings.

Charles J. Gelso, Ph.D. Grant

Description

This program awards grants for research projects in the area of psychotherapy process and/or outcome. In alternating years the grant is awarded to graduate students or doctoral level psychologists.

Program Goals

• Advance understanding of psychotherapy process and psychotherapy outcome through support of empirical research in these areas
• Encourage talented graduate students towards careers in psychotherapy research
• Support psychologists engaged in psychotherapy research

Funding Specifics

• One annual grant of $2,000

Eligibility Requirements

• In alternating years, graduate students/pre-doctoral interns (even-numbered years) or psychologists/postdoctoral fellows (odd-numbered years) will be eligible
• In 2010, graduate students in psychology and pre-doctoral interns who are in good standing at an accredited university will be eligible
• In 2011, doctoral level psychologists and postdoctoral fellows will be eligible
• Demonstrated or burgeoning competence in the area of proposed work
• IRB approval must be received from the principal investigator’s institution before funding can be awarded if human participants are involved
• The same project/lab may not receive funding two years in a row

Evaluation Criteria

• Conformance with goals listed above under “Program Goals”
• Magnitude of incremental contribution in topic area
• Quality of proposed work
• Applicant’s competence to execute the project
• Appropriate plan for data collection and completion of the project

Proposal Requirements for All Proposals

• Description of the proposed project to include goals, relevant background, target population, methods, anticipated outcomes, and dissemination plans
• CV of the principal investigator
• Format: not to exceed 3 pages (1 inch margins, no smaller than 11-point font)
• Timeline for execution (priority given to projects that can be completed within 2 years)
• Full budget and justification (indirect costs not permitted). The budget should clearly indicate how the grant funds would be spent.
• Funds may be used to initiate a new project or to supplement additional funding. The research may be at any stage. In any case, justification must be provided for the request of the current grant funds. If the funds will supplement other funding or if the research is already in progress please explain why the additional funds are needed (e.g., in order to add a new component to the study, add additional participants, etc.)
• No additional materials are required for doctoral level psychologists who are not postdoctoral fellows
• Graduate students, predoctoral interns, and postdoctoral fellows should refer the section immediately below for additional materials that are required.

Additional Proposal Requirements for Graduate Students, Predoctoral Interns, and Postdoctoral Fellows:

• Graduate students, pre-doctoral interns, and postdoctoral fellows should also submit the CV of the mentor who will supervise the work
• Graduate students and pre-doctoral interns must also submit 2 letters of recommendation, one from the mentor who will be providing guidance during the completion of the project and this letter must indicate the nature of the mentoring relationship
• Postdoctoral fellows must submit 1 letter of recommendation from the mentor who will be providing guidance during the completion of the project and this letter should indicate the nature of the mentoring relationship

Additional Information

• After the project is complete, a report on how the money was spent must be submitted
• Grant funds that are not spent on the project within two years must be returned
• When the resulting research is published, the grant should be acknowledged

Submission Process and Deadline

• Submit a CV and all required materials for proposal (see above for proposal requirements) to: Tracey A. Martin in the Division 29 Central Office, assnmgmt1@cox.net
• If the grant is to be used to support a thesis or dissertation, the thesis/dissertation proposal must be approved by the thesis/dissertation committee (this should be noted in the letter of recommendation from the mentor)
• Deadline April:  15, 2010

Questions about this program should be directed to the Division of Psychotherapy Research Committee Chair (Dr. Susan Woodhouse at ssw10@psu.edu), or the Division of Psychotherapy Science and Scholarship Domain Representative (Dr. Norman Abeles at abeles@msu.edu), or Tracey A. Martin in the Division 29 Central Office, assnmgmt1@cox.netCall

and David Reid

York University
Toronto, Canada

In today’s rapidly growing multicultural society, psychotherapists are faced with the complex task of working effectively with clientele whose psychosocial dynamics include increasingly diverse cultural values, beliefs and attitudes that the psychotherapist is either not aware of or not prepared to engage as part of the therapy.  In response to such diversity, much been written on cross-cultural therapy (e.g. Sue & Sue, 1999). However, the clinical literature tends to provide static and stereotypical descriptions of ethnic group members’ psychological characteristics, whilst ignoring the dynamic and evolving nature of culture; understanding culture as a dynamic process is particularly important when working with people that identify with and integrate values and attitudes of their homeland as well as their host culture. Moreover, most of the literature on working with culturally diverse clients in psychotherapy lacks an empirical basis. What is needed is a more theoretically guided and empirically informed approach to incorporating culture into the process of psychotherapy. To this end, systemic-constructivist theory of human change processes (Fergus & Reid 2001, 2002; Mahoney, 1991; Neimeyer & Winter, 2006) is proposed as a model for conducting culturally inclusive psychotherapy.

From a systemic-constructivist perspective, culture is intrinsic to every individual’s core meaning making processes. Both psychotherapist and client are immersed within their culturally shaped meaning systems. The culturally sensitive psychotherapist’s job is to develop an appreciation of his or her own culturally circumscribed constructs and learn to engage the client in a therapeutic discourse that allows the client’s culturally nuanced ways of construing to be drawn out and be the focus of psychotherapy. We demonstrate by presenting preliminary results of our research with South Asian Canadian couples receiving a culturally grounded application of Systemic-Constructivist Couple Therapy (SCCT; Reid, Dalton, Laderoute, Doell, & Nguyen, 2006; Reid, Doell, Dalton, & Ahmad, 2008).

A Systemic-Constructivist Understanding of Culture

Systemic-constructivist theory is a postmodern epistemology that integrates classical systems theory of interpersonal dynamics with more recent social constructivist ideas about how individuals make meaning (Fergus & Reid, 2001, 2002; Mahoney, 1991). This view proposes that individuals actively construct their knowledge — what they know and experience as their ‘reality’ – as they interact with their environment. An objective and true account of reality as it exists is considered impossible. The knower and what is known are indistinguishable. Individuals are engaged in a process of reflexively making sense of their ongoing flow of experience in order to adapt (Wittezaele, 2004). What a person knows is derived and maintained to the extent that it is ‘functional’ for one’s existence, rather than a ‘verifiable’ universal given (Fergus & Reid, 2002; Neimeyer & Winter, 2006). In other words, constructs give order and meaning to the otherwise chaos of human experience and allow one to navigate their internal and external experiences and coexist with others in predictable and intelligible ways.

Each individual’s ways of construing are highly idiosyncratic and complex yet they are not randomly determined. People’s ways of knowing are a product of a consensual validation process within the various social systems they engage in such as their family, community, and country. This is not just an interpersonal validation process, but also an interpersonal process with internalized symbolic others. Such collective systems provide members with a view of morality and purpose, and these views are reflected in, as well as perpetuated by, the ways in which people think, feel, behave, interact, experience, etc. The mutually validated construing systems of social groups represent equally legitimate ‘realities’ to that of other groups (Christopher, 2001; Markus, 2008).  It is important to note that every person within a specific community does not necessarily maintain the same construct system. People engage in many different collectives, and this is particularly salient for ethnic minorities such as South Asians who simultaneously participate in their heritage culture as well as their host culture.

An implicit and insidious assumption pervading the clinical literature and discussion of cultural sensitivity in psychotherapy is that culture is a thing people ‘have’; culture is an attribute or trait added on to a client’s authentic individual experience. Furthermore, culture is viewed as something ethnic minorities from traditional and Eastern societies have that people of a more individualistic and Western society have progressed beyond. The tendency to view culture as another layer on top of presumed universal core psychological processes is reflective of a Western individualistic way of thinking — which itself is cultural — that sees people as self-contained autonomous entities (Christopher, 2001; Markus, 2008; Wittezaele, 2004). This cultural bias explains the field’s inherent interest in studying and attempting to understand the phenomena of culture as distinct ‘groups of people’ differing on bipolar categories, where people belong to an Eastern or Western society; tend to be more individualistic or collectivist; are either high on independence or interdependence. This desire to analyze people in reductionist ways in order to identify internal basic, essential characteristics stripped of their social context is reflective of a Western idealistic view of people as self-reliant, behaving independent of their social milieu.

In order to develop cultural competence in clinical work, it is important to be conscious of such assumptions and start to cultivate an appreciation that culture is not a ‘thing’ that a person has, nor a type or category they fall into, but an integral part of every person’s ways of processing. In fact, culture is better understood as something people ‘do’ rather than ‘have’ (Markus, 2008). Individuals reify culture by their socially patterned ways of behaving, thinking, feeling, sensing themselves, etc.  A therapist’s sensitivity to their client’s culture involves sensitivity to their clients’ construct systems, while at the same time being astutely aware of their own construing processes.

Therapists’ Attunement to Cultural Construing Processes

In attempting to be more ‘culturally sensitive’ in psychotherapy, psychotherapists’ face the paradox of trying to understand their clients’ worlds using the clients’ constructs when inevitably psychotherapists use their own constructs. It helps greatly for psychotherapists to cultivate an awareness of how engulfed they are in their own cultural assumptions. A good example of making one’s cultural self awareness conscious is to visit another culture. Consider, for example, what happens to an American upon starting to live in India. One’s sense of self, preferences, priorities, habits, food tastes, social norms, ways of understanding and so forth become very apparent because of the contrast of one’s own culture with that of others. Similarly, the client from a different cultural background is likely to sense the self in ways that reflect the cultural diversity and this sensitivity is highly dialectical in the relationship with the psychotherapist.

The systemic constructivist approach attempts to address this paradox by developing a deeper understanding of the clients’ constructions that accompany their observable behaviours (Fergus & Reid, 2002; Reid, et al., 2006; 2008). The psychotherapist, through their own ways of talking and understanding, draw out their clients’ sense of their difference in a myriad of ways, some of which clients may not necessarily be open to or aware of until participating in the therapy. The psychotherapist guides clients to become more aware of their constructs; then this client awareness is combined with experimentation to make changes in clients’ ways of understanding and behaving that work for them interpersonally and intra-personally (examples of how this may be done is provided in the next section). Theoretically, this is what we mean about working from within the client’s framework and reality; we spend a lot of time engaging the client to openly convey how they see, act and feel about their lives. The process of drawing out the client’s ways of seeing things is in itself therapeutic for the client who starts to have an increasing understanding of themselves which can be empowering.

Some of that increasing awareness of cultural difference may impede the therapy process not because of the client alone, but because culturally naïve therapists are not aware of their own difference in an interpersonally empathic way.  That naivety creates a glass wall that one cannot penetrate especially if the client and psychotherapist are not fluent in the nuances of the language used in the therapy sessions. This interpersonally dynamic cultural difference can become particularly poignant as the psychotherapist tries to instill a close and more intimate alliance commensurate with the therapist’s automatic goal to instill a therapeutic alliance that is itself, culturally defined.

Furthermore, the psychotherapist may be at risk of misinterpreting the client’s difficulties in the psychotherapy as being a form of therapeutic resistance on the part of the client rather than the psychotherapist’s culturally based difficulties in engaging the client in a therapeutic discourse. The antidote to such experiences is for psychotherapists to cultivate a deep awareness of the cultural diversity in meaning making that they and their clients have, respectively.

The psychotherapist develops a great deal of self sensitivity so as to not inadvertently impose culturally based ways of construing. To counter that risk, the psychotherapist normally takes an agnostic attitude that puts the client as the expert and constantly draws out the client’s ways of understanding so that the psychotherapist is learning from the client. The dialectical qualities of psychotherapist learning from the client helps greatly for the therapeutic alliance to move forward and in tune with the cultural nuances so critical to the client’s therapeutic progress.

The Systemic-Constructivist Approach to Working with South Asian Couples

To demonstrate what has been proposed in this paper thus far, we introduce our program of research which focuses on developing an empirically based approach to couple therapy that accommodates to the cultural nuances of the South Asian marriage (Ahmad, 2006; Ahmad & Reid, in process; Ahmad & Reid, 2008). This work is pioneering in that the psychotherapy combines both qualitative and quantitative methods in order to carefully assess the dynamics of each South Asian couple and subsequently provide interventions that are coherent with culturally based ways partner’s understand, experience and respond to each other. This program was designed so that the referred couples feel comfortable with the therapy model because it is consistent with their values and ideals.

This research is an extension of an empirically derived couple intervention called Systemic Constructivist Couple Therapy (SCCT; Reid, et.al, 2006: 2008). The SCCT itself was developed in a manner similar to the work with South Asians in that rather than using extant models of couple therapy that were themselves initially derived from a theory of therapy for the individual, Reid and his colleagues developed SCCT through experimental clinical interventions guided by systems and constructivist principles. This included careful qualitative analysis of in vivo change processes couple therapy sessions. Interventions were designed to draw out each partner’s ways of knowing, their intuitions, their experiencing, etc., to enhance their understanding of themselves, particularly of themselves in the context of their relationship. The techniques were focused on working within each partner’s system of values, beliefs, experiences, etc. What emerged as a key component to the effectiveness of SCCT therapy was the enhancement of each partner’s couple identity or ‘we-ness’. We-ness is the degree to which partner’s identify themselves with their marital relationship. It is simultaneously an intra and intersubjective experience of partners who through the process of SCCT come to intuitively know their partner, as well as themselves in relation to their partner, in a deeper way. This identity was found to be central to how well the couple functions and the resulting satisfaction that partners have with their marriage at post therapy and gains made post therapy were significantly related to outcome at 2 year follow up (Reid et al., 2006). Details of the therapy and explanation of we-ness are published elsewhere (Reid et al, 2006; 2008).

The underlying principles of SCCT are accommodating of cultural differences, yet we continued to maintain an agnostic attitude towards South Asians and were rigorous in our calibration of SCCT to this population. In our first phase of this research program we recruited South Asian couples in distress that were looking to enhance their relationship. There were 30 partners comprising 15 couples. Couples were referred for couple therapy at an urban university clinic in Toronto, Canada. Partners identified themselves of South Asian ancestry that included 19 Asian Indians, 8 Pakistanis, and 2 Bengalis. The average length of marriage was 5.19 years (SD = 5.93) and ranged from 5 months to 19 years. Average age of wives was 30.27 years (SD = 5.44) and husbands was 33.06 yrs (SD = 6.42). There were 5 couples whose marriage was arranged by parents, 9 couples who indicated having personally selected each other and 1 common-law couple. Couples received seven weekly sessions of 2-hr SCCT couple therapy. They were self-referred, hearing about us from various sources that included physician, community services, the media, internet, and family/friends. Couples were not screened and were seen as long as both partners were interested in improving the relationship. Examples of presenting complaints: constant arguing, verbal/physical violence, problems with sexual intimacy, affair, extended family interference, unfulfilled expectations, etc.

Within the session the psychotherapist takes a participant-observer role (Fergus & Reid, 2001; 2002) of empathic sensitivity to the partners’ constructions, and of stepping back and observing the therapist-couple system. The psychotherapist takes an agnostic position with respect to the partners, being aware that they are not neutral observers, and exploring with the client the meaning of their words and descriptions of presenting issues. For example, a common presenting complaint for South Asian partners has been ‘in-law interference’. One spouse feels their partner’s loyalties are towards their parents rather than the spouse. An initial reaction of the Western therapist may be that the partner has not successfully individuated from their family of origin. Other therapists who are becoming increasingly aware of the great degree of value placed on connectedness with extended family for South Asians may be sympathetic to this dilemma and attempt to help the couple negotiate a healthy balance between their parents and spouse. Both positions could be true, yet there still remains a need to draw out a richer understanding of how each partner in the relationship idiosyncratically construes this issue.

When partners express this issue of extended family interference to the therapist, open ended questions that facilitate emergence of the partners ways of knowing and feeling can draw out the partner’s constructs and the therapist may realize their initial formulation was based on their own constructs. For instance, asking the couple to draw on examples from how their parents may have dealt with in-law conflict can explicate each partner’s values and ways thinking. While on the one hand it may appear that they are merely describing how their parents did things, there is a lot of meaning in their choice of words and reasoning that can be further explored with the clients to draw out the nuances of their understanding of family relationships, values and beliefs which they themselves had never fully thought through. It is not necessary that the psychotherapist be silent and not provide any suggestions for fear of tainting the therapy with their own cultural constructions. Indeed, the psychotherapist can provide a construction of the issue which is close to the client’s way of seeing things after immersing themselves in the client’s ways of thinking. Reid and colleagues (2006, 2008) have described other more focused interventions available in the approach. The overall spirit of the 7 session intervention is to drawing out partners’ deepened understanding of themselves and of the spouse that leads to a mutual discovery of their couple system and collaboratively identify alternative ways they may do things in their relationship that fit within their internal values and ideals.

A preliminary analysis of the 15 couples that completed the 7-session therapy found significant improvement on the main outcome variables at post therapy. On the widely used Dyadic Adjustment Survey (DAS; Spanier, 1976), which measures relationship satisfaction, at pre-therapy (session 1) 70% of the partners were in the clinically significant range and at post therapy (session 7) 43% of partners were in clinically significant range. On the Revised ENRICH Relationship Adjustment Survey (Fowlers & Olson, 1993) which in our program includes an additional 10 culturally relevant items (e.g. issues regarding extended family, social status, religion) validated on a large sample (n = 114) of South Asian Canadians (Ahmad & Reid, in press), couples demonstrated significant pre-post therapy change (p < .001). The results were comparable to our previous sample of non-South Asian couples (Reid et al., 2006). Several process variables are currently being explored and a 2-year follow up will be done to ascertain the long-term maintenance of post-therapy gains and how these are connected with therapeutically induced changes in the therapy 2 years earlier.

Concluding Remarks

Research to date on developing evidence-based therapy for cross-cultural clients is lacking. Cultural competence in clinical work requires ongoing disciplined awareness of one’s own ways of knowing in order to cultivate an appreciation of clients’ culturally based constructs. Our program of research demonstrates a viable attempt to develop an intervention with South Asian couples that is grounded in an understanding of psychological processes that are indigenous to this group. While our work is focused specifically on one cultural group, the systematic observation of psychological processes with this community we believe can broaden the basis of systemic-constructivist theory of psychotherapy and the science underlying clinical intervention in general.

References

Ahmad, S. (2006).  Contextualizing selves of South Asian Canadian couples: A grounded theory analysis. Unpublished Masters Thesis

Ahmad, S. & Reid, D.(in process). Relationship Satisfaction among South Asian Canadians: The Role of ‘Complementary-Equality’ and Listening to Understand. Interpersona.

Ahmad, S. & Reid, D. (2008, September) Cultural Adaptation of Systemic-Constructivist Couples Therapy for South Asians: Exploring the Mechanisms of Change. Poster session presented at the 2008 North American Society for Psychotherapy Research (NASPR) conference, New Haven, Connecticut, United States.

Christopher, C. (2001). Culture and psychotherapy: Toward a hermeneutic approach. Psychotherapy, 38(2), 115-128.

Fergus, K.D., & Reid, D.W. (2001). The couple’s mutual identity and reflexivity: A systemic-constructivist approach to the integration of persons and systems. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. 11(3), 385-410.

Fergus, K.D., & Reid, D.W. (2002). Integrating constructivist and systemic metatheory in family therapy. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 15, 41-63.Herman, H.J.M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 243-281.

Fowlers, B. & Olson, D. (1993). ENRICH marital satisfaction scale: A brief research and clinical tool. Journal of Family Psychology. 7, 176-185.

Mahoney, M.J. (1991). Human change processes: The scientific foundations of psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

Markus, H. (2008). Pride, prejudice, and ambivalence: Toward a unified theory of race and ethnicity. American Psychologist, 63(8), 651-670.

Neimeyer, R. A. & Winter, D. A. (2006).  Personal construct therapy.  In N. Kazantzis & L. L’Abate (Eds.),  Handbook of homework assignments in psychotherapy.  New York:  Kluwer.

Reid, D. W., Dalton, E. J., Laderoute, K., Doell, F. K., & Nguyen, T. (2006). Therapeutically induced changes in couple identity: The role of we-ness and interpersonal processing in relationship satisfaction. Genetic, social and general psychological monographs, 132, 241-283.

Reid, D., Doell, F., Dalton, J, & Ahmad, S. (2008). Systemic-Constructivist Couple Therapy (SCCT):  Description of approach, theoretical advances, and published longitudinal evidence. Psychotherapy Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 45(4),477-490.

Spanier, G. (1976). Measuring dyadic adjustment: New scales for assessing the quality of marriage and similar dyads. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 38, 15-28.

Sue, D.W. & Sue, D. (1999). Counseling the culturally different: Theory and practice. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.

Wittezaele, J. (2004). A systemic and constructivist epistemology for a relational vision of a man. Brief Strategic and Systemic Therapy European Review, 1,11-18