Toward a global vision of counseling psychology

Abstract

Boston CollegeWith this Major Contribution to The Counseling Psychologist (TCP), weseek to move the discourse about international issues within our field to amore central place in the conceptualization, scholarship, and practice ofcounseling psychology. We believe that the current multiculturalism move-ment shaping our country needs to take place at two levels. On the first level,wearecomingtorecognize,learnabout,andappreciatetheculturaldiversitywithin our country and among the racial, ethnic, and cultural groups thatmake up the population of the United States. On the second level, we alsoneedaglobalperspectivethatrecognizesandisopentootherculturesinothercountries, whether on this continent or across the oceans, on the other side ofthe world. The five articles that are presented here, when considered collec-tively, depict an ever-increasing global movement in counseling psychologywherein the fundamental ideas, premises, and counseling interventions arebeing revisited and, at times, redefined.THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVEAs Pedersen and Leong (1997) noted in their inaugural article that servedto reinvigorate the International Forum of TCP, “The most dangerousassumption of all is to assume that we already know all of our fundamentalassumptions”(p.119).Inourview,someofthemostdangerousassumptionsabouttheinterfaceofhumanbehaviorandculturehavebeencreatedoutofaninsulationorisolationamongcounselorsandresearchers.Forexample,argu-mentsandpositionsimplyingthatallgoodandusableknowledgeinpsychol…