Fedko S. Culturally Appropriate Trends in Psychological Counselling

This thesis presents a theoretical analysis of socio-cultural conditionality of psychological counselling practice and the empirical study of the stated phenomena representation in the professional consciousness of counselling psychologists. The comprehensive analysis of existing views on the issue of psychological counselling in the context of culture, which implies the counselling process conditionality by the sociocultural environment, was provided. The fundamental principles for creating the culturally-oriented models of psychological counselling, the cornerstone among which is an appeal for the philosophical and axiological dimension of cultures, were defined. It was determined that the peculiarities of the orientation of the socio-cultural content of counselling psychologists' work is defined by two culturally-appropriate trends - indigenization and universalization; the explicitness and implicitness of which determine the actual reflexive attitude of psychologists towards their own professional activity in counselling service. It was found that the indigenization and universalization opposition is inherently incorrect. It is important to understand that it is actually about the explicit and implicit indigenous positions, views and systems of counselling and psychotherapy. Due to the specificity of the obtained data, the supplement of the counselling psychologists' vocational training with such component of the professional training as "socio-cultural competence", that involves skills of successful solution of professional tasks using the culturally-appropriate methods, is proposed.