Department of Counselling and Psychology Course outline
Programme Doctor of Psychology in Counselling Psychology
Course Title Culture and Psychotherapy
Course Code CP601
Number of Credits 3
Duration of Weeks 15
Contact Hours Per Week 3 hours 
Pre-requisite Course(s) N/A
Dimension Knowledge
Course Aims
This course is designed to facilitate a scholarly and experiential learning environment for students to examine ways in which culture shapes and crystallizes not only counselling psychologist and client identities and their therapeutic encounters, but also the phenomenology of mental health and psychotherapy. Specifically, students will be challenged to think critically and reflexively about the dynamic role of culture and language in constructing one’s reality, as well as the processes of psychotherapy. The course also aims at fostering students to grow competently as an independent scientist-practitioner who espouses a multicultural sensitive framework in psychotherapy practice (i.e., case conceptualization, assessment, psychological diagnosis, and therapeutic intervention) and psychotherapy research.
Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOS)

After completing this course, students will be able to:

1. Delineate the core values and identity of counselling psychology.

2. Recognize the multidimensional aspect of personal identity (e.g., assumptions, attitudes, values, beliefs) and its influence on their clinical and ethical decision-making.

3. Differentiate the concepts between cross-cultural counselling and multicultural counselling.

4. Describe the cultural phenomenology of mental health, assessment, psychological diagnosis and psychotherapy practice.

5. Demonstrate an increased sensitivity towards the dynamic interplay between their identities, client identities, and the cultural systems in affecting the processes of difficult dialogues on culture taboo topics in the psychotherapy context.

6. Differentiate the positivist and postmodern approaches to understanding mental health-related problem, defining human change, and conducting assessment and psychotherapy.

7. Strengthen their scientist-practitioner approach to conducting psychotherapy practice and research with a multicultural-sensitive framework.
Assessment
 
Assessment Tasks
Weighting
1.
Facilitation and Participation
30%
2.
"Difficult Dialogues" Case Presentation
35%
3.
Personal Narrative of Psychotherapy Practice
35% 
 
 
100%
For Reference Only
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