Colored Narratives of Counseling

Based on a qualitative study interviewing clients of African, Latino, Asian, and Native American heritage, this work examines their perceptions, representations and understandings of the relationship in counseling. These participant narratives respond to and navigate social identity constructions of race and ethnicity, gender, class, age, sexual orientation and disability of both themselves and the counselors they met with. It seems to be a dynamic, shifting, and context-dependent process that cannot be codified into absolute prescriptions. Perceptions of shared sociopolitical experience appears a much stronger bond in counseling than shared similarity on any dimension, and clients negotiated differences in identity between themselves and their counselors in flexible ways depending on their needs. Clients also used culture and language in counseling fluidly to develop preferred representations of self. Based on these themes, implications for counseling theory and practice are discussed.