ABSTRACT
This chapter explores sensitive issues that pose risks and dilemmas when working cross-culturally and when the merging of personal and professional issues occur. It presents a workshop that took place at the 1999 institute of family therapy conference. For instance, the potential quandary of race-matching of families and workers from ethnic-minority communities. The chapter shows that there is a dearth of ethnic-minority professionals working in the field of psychotherapy, family therapy, and psychology. For the ethnic-minority worker in the role of a white person, there would be the opportunity to assume membership of the dominant culture. For many black families, short, shock treatments were preferred in which punishment was not prolonged and children could learn, and hence benefit, from immediate feedback and soon afterwards return to being the object of their parents' affection. The residential unit has many components of a therapeutic community, including weekly therapy for mothers and their children. The dominant orientation of the therapeutic staff is psychodynamic.
