CULTURE AND COUNSELLING

 

Through his teaching in counselling in different countries as well as his management of a website for Christian counselling that helps people from all around the world, Jacques Poujol has gained a rich experience of counselling to people belonging to other cultures. In the following article, he gives some insights about the connection between culture and counselling.

Our focus in this article will be on dealing with different cultures in the framework of counselling. Here we understand culture as all the values, symbols and rules that enable a group of people to identify with each other, to get structured and to shape their own history. Culture is thus the way a group is thinking and acting and how it gives the members of this group their identity. Let us start with three general comments.

The current trend is to declare that all cultures are of equal value. Yet we can not approve this assertion. Some cultures are potentially problematic for the individual, his or her sanity and his or her well-being. This is the case for example with cultures imposing an inequality between men and women or others that practice the amputation of a limb (as a punishment), or cultures that impose excision or other initiatory rituals as an act of cultural belonging.

How can we define what is acceptable in a culture and what is not? Who will decide this? In the framework of Christian counselling, when the counsellor is helping someone from another culture, this question arises and needs an answer.

Men and women are naturally eager to improve their « well-being ». How much improvement of this well-being do this or that culture allow or make impossible ? Is the specific cultural context of the counsellee able to bring him or her this well-being ?

These questions lead us to identify some psychological invariables. The counsellor has to learn to distinguish between what is permanent and what is cultural, what is secondary and what is priority. He has to define what is a universally invariable and what is not. A clear view about the modality of his own counselling tools will enable him to feel flexible towards the different cultural models he will meet. Let us take the example of the specific roles of the father and the mother with the child. A clear modality here is the necessity of a triangular in the relationships between the mother, the father and the child. Yet the modality is the shape that this triangular relationship will take in a given culture. It is necessary here to make the distinction between the social role, given by society and the psychological function of the mother or father. Unfortunately, in the different cultures, these two realities are often confused.

How does a group of people shape its own culture ? In order to LIVE or even to survive in its historical reality, this people has had to LEARN and to ADAPT. This process is symbolised in the following triangle :

Learn

/           \

  Adapt   __  Survive

This is an interactive triangle. Facing different circumstances of History, a specific group has adapted to them, has learned new things and therefore has been able to survive. A culture is the result of the combination of these three verbs: learn, adapt and survive. If a group or someone wants to exist and survive, they have to adapt and learn. If they do not learn and adapt, they can not survive. These three attitudes need each other interactively and in an inseparable way. If a group is adapting to circumstances, it is not by duty but because it is necessary to its own existence and survival.

We have just used the word “survive”. When working with someone belonging to another culture, the counsellor should be reminded the following : a culture has been shaped and is shaping itself through the sufferings that the group has undergone. A culture is the result of a specific history and most times, a painful one. Therefore, dealing with the culture of someone equals dealing with the sufferings that helped to shape this culture. These sufferings bring back the injustices that have been inflicted, more or less personally, more or less consciously. When these sufferings have been forgotten, when they are not in the consciousness anymore (for example the reason for a memorial day) they bring guilt and the group needs to find a scapegoat to get rid off its guilt. The challenge for the counsellor is to hear this collective suffering, which is a root for the identity of the person (and which explains his/her relationships with his/her environment) and to help the person to deal with it, without cutting him/her off this root.

What are the main points where culture is going to play a role in our counselling ? It will be mainly in the relationships of the person with:

• the model of his/her culture about the couple, the marriage, the family, the sexuality : are these models able to help him/her to feel better in his/her identity or do they increase his/her shame, unhappiness…?
• the working place and money matters
• the social contract

Facing these issues, the key word in this process is to ADAPT. To adapt means to understand where the person stands in the process of the construction of his/her personality; to identify which further step the person is able to take in order to feel better without denying his/her cultural roots and sufferings. The counsellor must understand how to use the clients cultural models in order to lean on them to reach a better well-being of that person.

Finally, here is a key in order to help the counsellor to implement this attitude: the “ethical square”. We know that the counsellor is not giving any piece of advice but he/she brings the client to do some thinking about his/her culture. Perhaps one side the counsellor respects the choices of the client and his/her development, yet on the other side, the counsellor is responsible for giving the client some tools to take good decisions in his/her specific context. The counsellor can not merely explain to the client:  “Well, it is your context, therefore your decision; up to you!” If he has to respect his/her freedom of choice and culture, he also has to help him/her making progress in his/her own situation. To keep this balance, the counsellor can share the following tool which is a framework in which it is possible to think about a situation, especially a cultural situation, and take the appropriate decisions.

This frame looks like a square whose four sides are each a truth. The whole square forms an indivisible unity.

The ethical square

• Ethics of the intentions
• Ethics of the Law
• Ethics of the situations
• Ethics of the utility

The client has the possibility to move within these four dimensions, four constant elements in the process of taking a decision. If the person takes a decision neglecting one of these dimensions, most of the time, a distortion occurs.

Similarly, any point between these four sides represents a healthy decision and not only point 1 which stands in the middle. Point 2, more influenced by the Law and the intentions or point 3, influenced by the situation and the utility are as valuable than this point 1. Ethics of the intentions

What are these four elements to take into account when taking a decision or helping someone to make a decision in his/her culture ? What happens if someone is only considering one of this dimension ?

The four ethical dimensions

1. The ethics of the Law

What does the Law say about the question that the client is pondering upon/over ? Here we understand “law” as the teaching of the Bible. Let us add that this biblical teaching is always confirmed by the clinical results.

Yet, if someone takes a decision without considering the others dimensions, it will quickly lead to legalism and religious fundamentalism. Besides, it does not help the person becoming mature if he/she never takes his/her responsibilities and only obeys without understanding. On the contrary, if someone neglects this dimension, it is an open door to liberalism without measure, the road to the tyranny of the personal profit/pleasure.

2. The ethics of intention

On this side of the square, the idea is that « the end justifies the means » and that only the motivation or intention matter. This concept is very popular in our society, for example with the love feeling: if someone does something out of love, this motivation is deemed more important than everything else. Yet a good motivation is not enough to justify our deeds and our choices. Out of love or tolerance, which are good motivations as such, we sometimes show great irresponsibility, as if love was the excuse for everything. Yet love cannot justify anything. Christian ethics is not laying only on a love that tolerates or bears everything for the sake of love; it is also based upon justice enacted by the Law, on specific situations and on the consequences of the acts. Yes, the motivations are important to consider although they are to be considered among the other elements. If only motivation matters, it leads to anarchy and collapse of collective life.

3. The specific situation ethics

This kind of ethics does not like to accept permanent or universal rule and prefers considering specific situations at given times for given people. The situation is here analysed case by case. It is the opposite of the ethics of the Law. It is true that contemporary ethical questions reflect problems about which neither the apostles nor Jesus have expressed themselves directly. Yet Christian ethics is diachronic, that is to say that it crosses history, it is not influenced by it. It is necessary to understand on one side the cultural, local and time-limited root of the biblical text and also on the other side its universal dimension, which can be applied here and today. If someone is only taking into account this dimension in his/her choice, it can lead to a dangerous relativism.

4. The ethics of consequences

This ethics means taking into consideration only the consequences of any action. The utility is here the only moral criteria to evaluate an action, only the results matter. It is a moral pragmatism holding as “good” everything that succeeds. In that sense Hegel declared that “History alone reveals the efficient value of our deeds according to the role they played by bringing forward History or slowing it down this one”. Nevertheless, the client has no right justifying his/her act only by pointing to its results, neglecting the other dimensions.

An ethics of responsibility

Within this frame, this « ethical square » the client will be able to consider different aspects of his/her issue and take better decision leading to more consistency and well-being. What does the Bible teach ? What is the motivation for this action? What are the specific circumstances? What effects is it going to have ? Christian ethics is about connecting and combining these four elements and not insisting only on a single one. It is like walking on a path at the top of a mountain with four slopes: the counsellor has to help the client not to fall down one these slope, one of these four dangers but take into account these four dimensions in order to solve any problem, especially cultural. It means that the counsellor will help the client to find his/her own path, thanks to convictions deeply rooted within this square. The responsibility of the counsellor is to show the client if he neglects one of the sides and to walk along the chosen path together.