Multi(ple) cultural voices speaking “Outside the Sentence” of counselling and psychotherapy

Abstract This paper examines the notion that marginalized clients through their socio-cultural and geo-political histories are positioned "outside" the masculine cultural metaphors and conventional theoretical epistemologies of counselling, psychology and psychotherapy. In other words, these minoritized clients are "outside the sentence" of the texts and contexts of therapy. The discursive practice of therapeutic reconstitution and restoration produces a particular set of vocabularies and sentences that facilitate transformation and psychic equilibrium consistent with the process of individuation and self actualization. However, for marginalized groups, such as black and other visible minority, women, deaf, gay and lesbian clients the hegemonic masculine narratives of counselling psychology and psychotherapy only make it possible for these clients to be "outside the sentence", not just grammatically and metaphorically of the therapeutic project, but in the external reality of how the practice is clinically governed. In other words, the social and cultural marginalization outside the clinic room is in a dialectical relationship with the therapy dyad. For the minoritized client being "outside the sentence" produces the effect of being "inside" another process, i.e., the history of subjugation, domination, diaspora, and displacement. This paper explores this issue and argues that the only way for counselling, psychology and psychotherapy to bring the diversity client "within the sentence" of therapy is to assign and re-inscribe the history, memory and pain of "the Other" voices to the "inside" of the therapeutic space, to interrupt and disrupt the hegemonic masculine narratives, thus transforming "non-sentences" into sentences and paragraphs, and eventually into essays of the discursive subject. Keywords: Multicultural voicessentence of counseling and psychotherapysentence of Law of the Fathersentence of historymemory and pain Declaration of interest : The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper. Notes 1. The term multi(ple) cultural attempts to redefine the concept of multicultural or multi-cultural, not only replacing the hyphen or disrupting the continuity of cultural hegemony inherent in the "melting pot", "mosaic" or "salad bowl" idea but through the insertion of an inclusive and relational parenthesis, to bring together all the Other identities of marginalities and not just the gendered Other, as is usually conjugated in the traditions of multicultural. The term multi(ple) cultural also challenges any (mis)understanding of the homogenous definition of the term multicultural, or an a priori notion of a static, biologically determined or a fixed psycho-social theorizing. Multi(ple) culture must not only be seen as a post-structuralist or post modern iconography of the deconstructed traditions and customs of "race" and ethnicity, but a reflection of the practices and performances of other marginalized and oppressed socio-cultural identities – gender, sexual orientations and disability. The inclusion of women, lesbian, gay men, trans-gendered and disabled individuals draws attention to a dynamic, changing and evolving concept that is neither permanent or transhistorical but one that emerges from the discourses and dialogues of recent movements (and moments) of resistances to the primitive and primary anxieties of diference and diversity. The multi(ple) cultural voices and the cultures and identities that they represent, are seen as dynamic process which are changing and reinventing themselves, fragmenting and unifying, reforming and transforming themselves, within different spaces and different times in complex and contesting ways.

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