Culturally relevant meanings and their implications on therapy for traumatic grief: Lessons learned from a chinese female client and her fortune-teller

Abstract

Human experiences, including traumatic encounters, are typically filtered through cultural lenses that help to define them and hence influence the pattern of coping and subsequent adjustment (Gielen, Fish, & Draguns, 2004; Hoshmand, 2006). Culture also impacts on worldviews of therapists and clients, their expectancies toward therapy, and the therapeutic relationship (Fischer, Jone, & Atkinson, 1998; Pedersen, 2003); which are salient factors influencing the effectiveness of psychotherapy and counseling (Frank & Frank, 1991; Torrey, 1996). As current theoretical models of trauma and their treatment implications have been generated from mostly middle-class English-speaking individuals, they may not be applicable to individuals from other socio-cultural background (Guilfus, 1999; Marsella, Friedman, Gerrity, & Scurfield, 1996). In this chapter, I will present a case example of a traumatically bereaved Chinese woman to illustrate how a lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of the therapist would impede her progress in therapy and led to a pre-mature termination. In subsequent sections, I will first summarize major theoretical and treatment models of traumatic deaths and traumatic grief. I will then discuss how principles from Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism influence Chinese cosmology and ontology. Finally, I will describe a case example with session by session summary and reflection. © 2007 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC. All rights reserved.