A young psychologist named Rivka Brown has just become the assigned therapist for a girl named Maria Lopez. The whole Lopez family, including Maria, her siblings, and grandparents, used to live in Mexico, but later relocated to the United States. Dr. Brown comes from a blended family. Her mother is white and Jewish and her father, divorced from his first wife, is Afro-American. She has a sister who is an engineer and brother who is a hair stylist. The foreign language she studied in school was French, not . Maria was reluctant to see a psychologist to begin with and the therapy is not going well. What do you think is the major problem?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Therapy is complicated by the cultural differences and clashing values of the participants. Dr. Brown's family background is far from traditional: interracial, father's divorce history, and non-traditional male-female occupations of the brother and sister. Maria comes from a close knit Catholic family with highly defined male and female roles. While knowing the Spanish language might be helpful for the therapist, Maria has been going to school in the United States and speaks English well. The cultural gap between the therapist and patient is much greater than just a native language difference.

A Young Psychologist Named Rivka Brown Has Just Become the Assigned