46-2 Counseling Practice With Gay or Bisexual Men: A Multicultural Counseling Perspective

This article discusses the factors related to the counseling practice with gay or bisexual men from a multicultural counseling perspective. By interviewing three gay or bisexual clients about their counseling experiences and analyzing the data with thematic analysis, the researcher concluded seven important factors: client-center, aiming client's personal issues, appropriate conseling skills, knowledge about gay community, awareness of special social issues related to gay identity, authentic sympathy or supportiveness to client's gay identity or experiences, openness to client's various experences in gay culture, which counselors should pay attention to in order to work effectively with gay or bisexual clients. On the other hand, four ineffective counseling practices were also identified: anxiety about or avoidance of gay issues, insensitivity to gay issues, insisting on evaluating client's gay identity, implicit prejustice against gay in neutral languages or attitudes. This article indicates the bias existing in the literatures related to LGB counseling in Taiwan and provides some suggestions to counselors and gay or bisexual clients from a multicultural counseling perspective.

Keywords
 gay or bisexual clients ; LGB counseling ; multicultural counseling and therapy

Download
Download