The Minority Identity Development Model distinguishes between 5 stages that people experience when trying to understand themselves in terms of their own culture, the dominant culture, and the oppressive relationship between the two cultures. In the conformity stage of minority development, a person prefers the dominant cultural values; the dissonance stage is marked by confusion and conflict, and the person begins to question the values of the previous stage; in the resistance and immersion stage, a person rejects the dominant culture and fully supports minority views; the introspection stage is characterized by the conflict between autonomy and the limitations of the last stage; and in the stage of articulation and synergistic awareness, the person experiences self-realization and individual autonomy.
The 4 stages of the Troiden Homosexual Identity Development Model are Sensitization, identity confusion, identity assumption and identity commitment. According to the Homosexual Identity Development Model, the Sensitization stage is characterized by feelings of marginalization, a preoccupation with gender identification over sexuality, and the internalization of a negative self-concept. The identity confusion stage of homosexual identity development, Troiden argues, is marked by the youthful experience of conflict between the identity one develops as a child and that one demands as an adolescent. During this stage, stress can be managed through denial, avoidance, repair, or acceptance.
When a homosexual person experiences a reduction in social isolation and an increase in contact with other homosexuals, Troiden would say that he or she is in the identity assumption stage of homosexual identity development, during which capitalization, minstralization, stepping and group alignment are used as coping techniques. .
Commitment is the final stage of homosexual identity development and involves the integration of homosexuality to the extent that it becomes a state or way of being, rather than a description of sexual behavior. People in this stage generally achieve committed same-sex love and are comfortable identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual to non-gay people.
McLaughlin has distinguished between these 8 stages of homosexual identity formation: isolation, alienation, self-rejection, passing as heterosexual, self-identity consolidation, acculturation, integration of self and public identity, and pride and synthesis. Herek argues that sexual bias is a more accurate term than homophobia and describes it as “all negative attitudes towards an individual based on sexual orientation”, regardless of her sexuality.
Hispanic clients prefer a more caring and personal approach to therapy. Ruiz and Padilla suggest that therapy with Hispanic clients should be active and goal-oriented, and should consider the importance of the family in therapy.
Regarding the treatment of Latino and Hispanic people, Cuento therapy includes the reading of “cuentos” or Spanish folktales and their discussion in the treatment process. When working with Native American clients, therapists should adopt a nondirective, story-oriented, accepting, and cooperative approach, as well as consider the use of Elder tribesmen, medicine men, legends, and other culturally significant aspects. As a result of the Asian-American ethnic group’s tendency to be reserved and inhibited, it is best to use an approach that is direct, structured, and short-term.
It has been suggested that treatment for older clients should include guiding the person through the stages of identity and fostering satisfying relationships and activities.
In the Reminiscence Therapy approach, an elderly client is encouraged to come to terms with past successes and shortcomings, resolve past conflicts, and develop future goals to enhance life meaning through a process of life review. life itself. A therapist who interprets everyone’s reality through their own cultural assumptions and stereotypes, minimizes cultural variations among clients, ignores their own cultural biases, and defines counseling in terms of dogmatically accepted techniques and strategies is said to be culturally encapsulated. .
Acculturation refers to the process of change that occurs when one culture assimilates into another culture.
African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans exhibit high-context communication, which is based on shared cultural understanding and nonverbal cues. In contrast, Anglo-Saxons are more likely to display low-context communication, which relies primarily on verbal messages. Cultural overgeneralization (Hall) occurs when a therapist assumes that all of a client’s problems are directly related to the client’s culture and not to other factors. The Racial Interaction Model was developed by Helms to provide a conceptual framework for understanding and resolving interracial tensions in intercultural psychotherapy.
