Multicultural Competence: A Practitioner-Scholar’s Reflections on its Reality and its Stubborn and Longstanding Elusiveness

Literature on the psychotherapist’s multicultural competence has burgeoned over the past 35 years. It has delivered increasingly nuanced conceptual and clinical papers on what constitutes multicultural competence. At the same time, research studies to date have failed to link clinically demonstrated multicultural competencies to therapeutic outcomes. This paper suggests that the current dilemma is determined by insufficient understanding and/or acceptance of the psychologically deep and abiding ways in which patients, therapists, teachers, and supervisors are affected by multicultural factors.