Spotlight on Multicultural Counseling & Diversity
One of the values held by ITP as an institution is an appreciation of differences. Special attention is paid to issues of multiculturalism and diversity. The courses below have been offered in the past at the Institute. The particular electives offered by the Institute vary at any given time. The school tries to be responsive to the particular interests of the current student body and aims to have the curriculum reflect those interests. Information on current classes can be found in the academic catalog.
Counseling Skills Across Cultural & Spiritual Traditions
This course will theoretically and experientially explore the historical and current relationship between psychology, culture, and spirituality. The content will focus primarily on developing oneself as a clinician who understands the complexity of cultural diversity and spiritual development as it unfolds in individuals, couples, and groups in a therapeutic or similar setting. This topic is emotionally charged and carries culturally learned assumptions which are often unconscious. Therefore, students will be asked to do mindfulness practices, inquiry, and dialogue to further understand beliefs, experiences, projections, counter-transference, fears, other feelings, and biases. Investigating one's own religious and cultural background will also facilitate this endeavor. The instructor will help create a safe space and offer appropriate exercises to encourage authentic exploration and dialogue. The course will also address the current social and global aspects of this topic: war (religious, cultural, economic, east-west, north-south), globalization, poverty, American domination, terrorism, and cultural complexes.
Cross Cultural Values and Transpersonal Experiences
The relationship between self knowledge and change, healing and disease, relationships, and spirituality is explored in this course. Addressed are the values and experiences that transcend cultural and national boundaries, describing underlying human nature.
Students will explore cross-cultural symbolism, seven universal rites of passage, and five spiritual/psychological processes of change. Through this coursework, one should better understand individual responses to change at this point in life and what may be challenges regarding change. Each student will be encouraged to learn about universal factors of healing, and assess which are over-developed, underÂdeveloped, or balanced in her/his life. In addition, the course will provide teaching about inner dynamics at the mental, emotional, energetic, and physical levels that accompany outward conditions of disease. Through experiential work, students will strive to equalize the balance between health and disease though work with the inner critic and learn about factors of gap and unity consciousness and how they are expressed in all relationships. Finally, the course will consider relationship issues on the levels of cultural diplomacy and global community.
