(Pedersen + 2008)
Abstract
Inclusive Cultural Empathy shows readers how to reach beyond the comfort zone of an individualistic perspective and increase competence in a relationship-centered context. The authors weave their own layered multicultural experiences with procedural, theoretical, and practical lessons to bring readers a model for how they might infuse their own clinical work with inclusion and multicultural sensitivity.
The authors present a broad definition of culture—to include nationality, ethnicity, language, age, gender, socioeconomic status, family roles, and other affiliations—and engage the reader with lively examples and exercises that can be adapted for classroom, supervision groups, or individual use.
With this book readers will learn how to help clients explore, discover, and leverage those internalized voices of their "culture teachers" that teach us who we are, how to behave, and how to resolve our problems or find life balance.
Notes:
They describe a more relational model of empathy within the context of counseling, therapy and the helping professions. This is not not building a broader culture of empathy.
"The theory of self-interest has led to a psychological norm of self-interest fostering an individualistic perceptive expectation in Western society. The more powerful the norm of self-interest, the more supporting evidence, the more powerful the self-interest norm becomes, in a circular self-fulfilling prophecy."