The Case Study of Dave

Dave (pseudonym) is an foreign student studying at a local international school. He came to his counsellor with his concern of his helplessness with his situation. Dave was first time studying in Singapore and experienced cultural differences with his classmates as most of them came from well to do families. Dave came from a humble family, and his parents borrowed money for his overseas study hoping that he would receive a good education.

Dave often could not relate to his classmates when they spoke about Europe vacations and he felt isolated. His classmates would ridicule him for his poor command of English and his humble family background. He struggled academically because he suffered a lack of confidence to meet the school’s expectations. He also felt the pressure to do well and repay his family with pride. He also mentioned he had no classmates with the same ethnics. Family and cultural stress is impeding his social integration with the locals. He often thought of going back to his country to escape all these cultural abuses.

To understand the cultural role of the counselling process, a counsellor must be aware of his own values, beliefs and culture, which can become a cause of conflict between counsellor and client. This may create a barrier of multicultural issues between counsellors and clients who come from different cultural backgrounds. Multiculturalism forms the basis of counselling and every counsellor and client encounter is cross cultural.

In counselling, the counsellor is placed in the position of power to help the client. It is very important that the counsellor must acknowledge this power to empower the client to solve his own issues. If this power is abused, the client may be subjected to prejudiced and discrimination. Hence, power has to be recognised in a cross cultural encounter especially for those clients who are experiencing prejudice, discrimination or social injustice.