Universal Approach Case Study

Murphy (1986) reminds us that in the U.K., the popularity of medical genetics and the abuse of Darwinism created increasingly racial and racist accounts of why certain groups of people were more degraded or tainted than others. Very little was known or researched on what was happening to large groups of individuals who were needing or seeking help in the context of alienation and disadvantage.

Power in the two approaches

Foucault points out that juridical systems of power produce the subjects they subsequently come to represent” Power in transcultural psychotherapy inevitably “reproduces” what it claims merely to “ represent”, which is decentralization and seclusion.

Fukuyama (1991) commented that “many people belonging to cultural groups who do not fit within the dominant culture power structure experience various forms

What this approach dose ultimately seeks to do away with vital domains of difference or cultural difference. Differences which emerge from and through being socialized within the framework of a particular group. The aim of the Universal approach is to enable the psychotherapist and counselor to overlook and not to be effected by difference. This domination influences the counseling process.

The advantage of the universal approach is that it reminds us that humans have many characteristic and attributes in common and that all people are unique as individuals. The Universal approach argues that any human difference can be considered cultural. Margolis and Rungta (1986) shared with other Universalist the position that “ the psychological consequences of being ‘ different’ are common across special populations, regardless of whether individual are members of an ethnic minority, homosexual or disabled” Margolis&