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Clinical Social Work Journal, Vol. 34, No. 3, Fall 2006 ( 2005)
DOI: 10.1007/s10615-005-0016-2
ABSTRACT: Understanding is an essential clinical practice skill, one which draws upon cognitive and affective, conscious and unconscious abilities. This paper explores the challenges posed by cross-cultural understanding. Using concepts from anthropology and data from anthropological eld work and clinical practice, it examines cultural differences in the experience and communication of affect. Clinical examples from Northern Thailand are used to illustrate the ways these subtle and complex differences in clients affective worlds challenge our capacity to understand those who are culturally different. Implications for cross-cultural social work practice are addressed.
KEY WORDS: cross-cultural practice; emotion; affect; culture.
INTRODUCTION
Understanding and empathy are core components of successful clinical practice. Kohut denes empathy as the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person. It is our lifelong ability to experience what another person experiences, though usually, and appropriately, to an attenuated degree (Kohut, 1984, p. 82). For
1Catherine Nye received her MSW from Virginia Commonwealth University, and her PhD in psychology from The Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago. She is currently Associate Professor at Smith College School for Social Work.
2Correspondence should be directed to Catherine Nye, Ph.D., Smith College School for Social Work, Lilly Hall, Northampton, MA 01063, USA; e-mail: [email protected].
303 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
UNDERSTANDING AND MISUNDERSTANDING IN CROSS-CULTURAL PRACTICE: FURTHER
CONVERSATIONS WITH SUWANRANG
Catherine Nye, Ph.D.1,2
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CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK JOURNAL
Kohut, empathy is a two-step process; it involves both understanding and explaining - or interpreting - that which is understood (Kohut, 1984, p. 102). According to Kohut In the understanding phase, the analyst verbalizes to the patient that he has grasped what the patient feels; he describes the patients inner state to the patient, thus demonstrating to him that he has been understood, that is, that another person has been able to experience, at least in approximation, what he himself experienced (Kohut, 1984, pp.176177). For Kohut, it is essential that the client be understood. In the absence of understanding, there can be no empathy.
Understanding in clinical practice is a complex process which involves both affective and cognitive components. It requires a complicated skill set; the capacity to...