When Family Values Clash With Therapist’s Goals and Treatment Delivery

This chapter starts from the idea that such disparities in views are associated with much emotion on both the client’s and the therapist’s part and impede constructive therapeutic work. It argues that it is crucial that therapy begin with the therapist acknowledging and accepting these differences with no attempt to honor one view over the other. Although most discussions of clashes with clients have focused on emotion in the client, less has been said about emotion within the therapist. Clients’ emotions are also high at points of rupture. Ethnic and racial minorities and families from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are disproportionately represented among child abuse cases. There may be a cumulative effect from family-therapist disparities in values and beliefs due to culture/class/race, disparities in normative beliefs and strategies for resolving conflict, and disparities in values inherent to therapeutic training.