The Other as Mystery: Diversity, Uniqueness, and Cultural Humility in Clinical Practice

Every counselor carries a working picture of what a human being is, and most of the time it stays out of sight until a client who does not fit it walks in. This course takes up that picture directly. Four Divine Mercy University psychologists, Lisa Klewicki, Helena Orellana, Harvey Payne, and Philip Scrofani, sit down to ask what changes in clinical practice when the person across from you is understood as created uniquely, in the image and likeness of God, and therefore as a genuine mystery rather than a type to be filed.

The conversation moves on two levels at once. On one level it is deeply personal: Orellana's conviction that the client is a subject, not an object, "an entire world in which I don't know," and that the only fitting response is curiosity and wonder. On the other level it is historical and professional: Scrofani's first-hand account of how diversity theory has moved through a "colorblind" phase that stressed our sameness, a "multicultural" phase that celebrated difference, a period when in-group and out-group loyalties turned difference divisive, and the current "polycultural" recognition that every culture stands on the shoulders of others. The through-line is a claim with real clinical consequences: refuse to reduce the client to a category or to your own frame, and let the slow work of discovery build trust across difference.

This is a single-lesson continuing-education course built around a short faculty video, followed by formation-oriented reading, a reflection activity, discussion questions, two enrichment sections (psychological and spiritual), and a post-test. It offers NBCC continuing-education credit for counselors and speaks equally to pastoral-care professionals who accompany others across lines of difference.