ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the need for a balance in addressing cultural differences and similarities in the diagnostic assessment and treatment of black children. The diagnostician who views a black child only in terms of that child being a victim of racism and who dismissed any effort to evaluate intrapsychic factors mars the diagnostic process. During the course of a workshop discussion on the self-concept of black children, a male partcipant sharply challenged global impression of the absence of positive role models in black communities across the country. Many black infants are born at risk because of limited, or nonexistent, prenatal care, among the adolescent mothers to be. The value of crisis intervention and brief which have often been identified as methods of choice for chronically disturbed children of crisis-ridden inner city black families has been challenged by some clinicians. D. R. Heacock addresses the significance of the child's aggression and the need for firm limit-setting in the psychotherapeutic process.
