Counseling Across the Cultural Divide: The Clemmont E. Vontress Reader

In these pages you will find a legacy of powerful articles stemming from the late 1960s and stretching into the present that built his case for the influence of culture on all aspect of counseling. Dr. Clemmont Vontress’s writings embody a rich humanistic-existential perspective that differed from his academic peers. He believed that culture and race can be transcended in counseling if the counselor works on seeing each client’s humanity. Vontress strove to deepen the profession’s guiding theories by reminding practitioners that good multicultural counseling theories take account of the inequities of society; the suffering inherent in the human condition; and the imperfections and limitations of the counselor applying those theories.

The collection is added to by contributions from an impressive group of international scholars who have contextualized Vontress’s work in their particular counseling and psychotherapy context.