Repositioning Cultural Competency with Clinical Doctoral Students: Unpacking Intersectionality, Standpoint Theory, and Multiple Minority Stress/Resilience

Abstract

Traditionally, different types of clinical cultural competency trainings have centered on racialized and gendered mental health statistics. Psychologists’ historical focus has been on typecasting clients’ “otherness” while failing to explore clinicians’ intersectionality and bias. These training gaps have led to many clinicians’ limited awareness of their own privilege, racial identity, and unconscious stereotyping. Building on my own standpoint as a researcher of LGBTQ + intersectional identity development, I present a 5-week experiential learning unit designed to foster clinical psychology doctoral students’ applied understanding of how cultural humility, critical cultural awareness, self-other awareness and compassion, and client-clinician intersectionality interactively impact clinical research and practice.

Keywords:

• Clinical training
• critical cultural awareness
• cultural humility
• intersectionality