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Historical Antecedent
C. GilbertWrenn was one of the first clinicians to acknowl-
edge the importance of culture in counseling. In his book,
The Counselor in a ChangingWorld
(1962) he suggests that en-
capsulated counselors are those who wall themselves off from
the world around them—they pretend that life inside their
social circle is the same as life outside of it. In an interview
withWachowiak and Aubrey (1976), he further clarified that
a counselor should have an understanding of the worldview
clients bring with them to counseling sessions.After all, cli-
ents’ perspectives address who they are, what pressures they
are under, and how they process life in general. To ignore a
person’s worldview is poor counseling, whichWrenn likens
unto being ‘sterile.’ He also adds that practitioners should in-
clude sociology and anthropology in their training courses as
these will enhance a counselor’s understanding of the world
in which people live and the meaning they give to their lives.
There are many in the research literature who have
contributed to this construct. DeraldWing Sue and his
brother David Sue (1973) in their article “The Neglected
Minority,” suggest that counseling may be antagonistic to the
values held by students of Asian ancestry. Psychologist John
W. Berry (1984), was one of the first theoreticians to develop
the notion of acculturation—the ways individuals of different
ethnicities relate and assimilate to the dominate culture. Wil-
liam E. Cross (1991) is one of America’s leading theorists and
researchers on African-American identity development, and
his text,
Shades of Black
is considered a classic. Janet Helms
is a pioneer in minority identity research and was one of the
first to researchWhite Identity in her book
Black andWhite
Racial Identity:Theory and Research
(1990).
Latinos’ Ethnic Identity
Ethnic identity has been defined as the aspect of someone’s
social identity that stems from membership in an ethnic
group and the significance individuals attach to that mem-
bership (Phinney, 1992). Phinney (1993) also adds that this
dynamic is made up of two components: 1) “Content,” which
includes ethnic behaviors individuals may practice and their
attitudes toward their group, and 2) “Process,” which focuses
on the way in which individuals come to understand the
implications of their ethnicity and its role in their lives. In
addition, individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds can
experience acculturative stress stemming from the dual pres-
sure to maintain ties to their group and to adapt and function
in the mainstream culture (French and Chavez, 2010).
Some of the first Latino practitioners to write on
counseling Latinos were Rene A. Ruiz and Amado M. Padilla
in their article “Counseling Latinos” (1977). In their article
they make three observations concerning Latino populations
that still have application for today:
• Latinos can be thought of as members of a single
cultural group in the sense they share historical
similarities in language, some values, and some
traditions,
• Simultaneously, they are a heterogeneous people
group with a distinct subculture based on national-
ity with unique traits that can include variations