Experiences of immigrant couple and family therapists clinically active in the United States
Authors:   , Nino Alba , Davey Maureen P. 
Published: July 2021

Immigration continues to be an important source of demographic growth in the United States (US Census Bureau, 2012). Mental health disciplines in general, and couple and family therapy in particular are paying more attention to immigration as an experience that can profoundly affect the identity and relationships of individuals and families. However, the impact of immigration has been addressed predominantly for immigrant clients. In the extant literature, much less attention has been paid to immigrants as couple and family therapists regarding how their experiences of immigration can affect clinical encounters with clients in the US. In order to fill this gap, this phenomenological dissertation study was designed to examine the clinical experiences of couple and family therapists who were born and raised outside of the US and who are clinically active in this country. Symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934) and the multicultural perspective as defined by Hardy and Laszloffy (2002) guided the development of this qualitative study which followed the stages and tasks of transcendental phenomenology (Moustakas, 1994). Thirteen immigrant couple and family therapists who were clinically active in the US volunteered for in-depth interviews. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and the transcriptions were analyzed with the assistance of MaxQDA and using conventional content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) to identify frequent and notable themes. The following major themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) the experience of immigration, (b) immigrant therapists and their clients, (c) development as a clinician, (d) relationships with colleagues and other professionals, and (e) a name for ourselves. The five major themes suggest that the exposure to different cultures during therapeutic encounters in the US and working in the midst of cultural differences affected participants' clinical work. First, findings supported previous literature that described immigrant therapists as capable of having an outsider perspective, being more aware of their assumptions, being more flexible in their definitions, and experiencing discrimination by clients and other professionals in the US. Second, findings suggest that the therapeutic encounter is a relationship where meanings between therapists and clients are exchanged which facilitates identity transformations, the debunking of stereotypes, and the negotiation of new meanings. Regarding implications, findings from this study suggest that feedback from clients, supervisors, colleagues and faculty members affect the formation of immigrant CFTs' evolving professional identities. Supervisors and faculty members in training programs should develop a more balanced view of immigrant CFT students and professionals that more closely attends to their needs and nurtures their strengths. CFT training programs and clinical supervisors should teach diversity and multiculturalism in a way that recognizes human diversity without promoting rigid categorization and divisiveness. Future research should pay closer attention to the strategies that immigrant CFTs develop that helps them clinically work in the midst of cultural differences with clients in the US.