Culturally Competent Family Therapy ― A General Model

The problems of a family are often conditioned by the cultural issues its members face, regardless of their socioeconomic background. However, most therapeutic models ignore this important factor. Ariel's book offers a model for diagnosis and therapy that incorporates cultural issues. It provides clinicians and trainees with readily applicable concepts, methods, and techniques for helping families and their members overcome difficulties related to intermarriage, immigration, acculturation, socioeconomic inequality, prejudice, and ecological or demographic change. This approach enables therapists to analyze and describe a family as a cultural system, explain its culture-related difficulties, and design and carry out culturally sensitive strategies for solving these difficulties.

SHLOMO ARIEL, a licensed expert and supervisor of clinical psychology and marital and family therapy, is the co-director of the Integrative Psychotherapy Center in Ramat Gan, Israel. He is also the Coordinator of Research and Academic Development at the Israeli branch of Lesley College, Boston, Massachusetts, a member of the faculty of the Program for Advanced Studies in Integrative Psychotherapy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and the chairperson of the Israeli Association of Psychotherapy Integration.