The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy

Is our society color-blind? Trans-racial? Post-racial? And what-if anything-should this mean to professionals in clinical practice with diverse clients?

The ambitious volume The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy probes these questions, compelling readers to look differently at their clients (and themselves), and offering a practical framework for more effective therapy. By tracing the racial ＂folk taxonomies＂ of eight cultures in the Americas and the Caribbean, the author elegantly defines race as a fluid construct, dependent on local social, political, and historical context for meaning but meaningless in the face of science. This innovative perspective informs the rest of the book, which addresses commonly held assumptions about problem behavior and the desire to change, and presents a social-science-based therapy model, applicable to a wide range of current approaches, that emphasizes both cultural patterns and client uniqueness. Among the highlights of the coverage:

• Common elements in therapy and healing across cultures.
• The psychological appeal of racial concepts despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
• Lessons psychology can learn from anthropology.
• Three types of therapeutic relationships, with strategies for working effectively in each.
• The phenomenon of discontinuous change in brief therapy.
• Solution-focused therapy from a cross-cultural perspective.

Thought-provoking reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers, and other mental health professionals as well as graduate students in these fields, The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy affirms the individuality-and the interconnectedness-of every client.

Jefferson M. Fish, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at St. John’s University, New York, where he has served as Department Chair and also as Director of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology. His specialties are cross-cultural psychology and clinical psychology. Within cross-cultural psychology his writings have dealt mainly with varying cultural conceptions of ＂race,＂ the ＂race＂-IQ debate, and Brazil; and he has been a Fulbright scholar in Brazil and China. Within clinical psychology, he has written widely on psychotherapy as a social influence process, on social and cultural factors in therapy, and on brief therapy--including brief behavioral, cognitive, strategic, systemic, and solution focused therapies, and on the use of hypnosis in brief therapy. He has also been active in the field of drug policy, and his publications include international and American sub-cultural perspectives on the issue.

Dr. Fish is the author of Culture and Therapy: An Integrative Approach, Placebo Therapy, and Dimensões da Empatia Terapêutica (Dimensions of Therapeutic Empathy, published in Portuguese); he is the editor of Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth, Drugs and Society: U. S. Public Policy, Is Our Drug Policy Effective?Are There Alternatives?, and How to Legalize Drugs; and he is the co-editor of Handbook of Culture, Therapy, and Healing, Principles of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy, and Psychology: Perspectives and Practice. He is the author of more than a hundred journal articles, book chapters, and other works; and he has served on the editorial boards of eight journals in the United States, Brazil, and India, and has been a consulting editor or invited reviewer for eight others.

Dr. Fish is a past Treasurer of the International Council of Psychologists, a past Chair of the Psychology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences, a past President of the Division of Academic Psychology of the New York State Psychological Association, a past Member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Family Psychology, a former Member of the Board of Directors and of the Executive Committee of Partnership for Responsible Drug Information, and former Adjunct Coordinator of the Committee on Drugs and the Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, of the American Psychological Society, and of the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology. He has attained American Board of Professional Psychology Diplomate status in Clinical Psychology and in Family Psychology.

Dr. Fish is married to the anthropologist Dolores Newton, who studies the Krikati and related tribes of Brazilian Indians. He spent two years as a Visiting Professor in Brazil, during which time he lived for a month with the Krikati; and he has returned to Brazil numerous times. He speaks English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, and German.