Definitional ceremonies: integrating community into multicultural counseling sessions.

Definitional Ceremonies are used as a forum for integrating members of diverse cultures into multicultural counseling sessions. The authors provide a philosophical foundation, implementation process, and excerpts from a typescript of a recent definitional ceremony involving a womyn and her mother, both recently in the United States from Panama.

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The development of social construction in individual and family counseling Gergen & McNamee, 1992; Bitter, Bubenzer, & West, 1998) has provided additional philosophical foundation for multicultural counseling, especially the narrative therapy of Michael White and David Epston (See Epston & White, 1992; Freedman & Combs, 1996; White, 1997; White & Epston, 1990). Both multicultural counseling and narrative therapy models take a stand against the imposition of dominant culture imperatives. Both recognize the misuse of power as a central construct in the presentation of dominant culture. Both approach clients from a de-centralized, collaborative position that respects the client-as-expert. Both seek to give voice to alternative knowledge-positions and seek what narrative therapists call "a re-authoring therapy" (Epston, White, & Murray, 1992, p. 96).

White (1997) adapted the anthropological work of Barbara Myerhoff (1982, 1986), using definitional ceremonies as a forum for reflection in individual therapy. Myerhoff's original work was conducted in Jewish communities and had the effect of creating a community identity that acted as a support for and affirmation of individual identities within that community. Based on White's adaptations, we see these forums as a process for integrating cultural communities in therapeutic interventions.

In the forum of a definitional ceremony, the client seeking a consultation would be asked to identify family and cultural community members who have significant "resonance" for her or him. Such people might appear to the person to share similar life experiences or represent varied life experiences that are valued. Such people may share a similar level of acculturation, or conversely, function at a different level of acculturation that has meaning for the client (Miranda, Estrada, & Firpo-Jimenez, 2000). Such people may share a similar struggle with gender/cultural issues or, on the other hand, appear to her to have reached a different level of resolution in the face of discrimination. While the therapist may issue the actual invitations to join the forum, when possible, we want the client seeking consultation to construct a reflecting team (Andersen, 1991) from her or his natural community.

White's (1997) use of reflecting teams as outsider-witness groups often includes the involvement of people who are not members of the family, community, or culture of the person seeking a consultation. While both Myerhoff and White refer to these "audiences" as artificial, they both note that the term artificial stands in relation to "natural" or "familial" audiences and does not imply dishonest, inauthentic, or second-rate. When "natural" communities for the client are unavailable, artificial communities can be constructed with members of the person's culture in combination with other cultures and still contribute powerful authenticating experiences for the client. Due to the low percentages of diverse cultures living in the area in which the authors live and work, we often use a multicultural reflecting team-as is the case with the examples presented below.

Definitional ceremonies can be described in three movements (White, 1997). In the first movement, the person seeking consultation is interviewed from a decentralized, "not-knowing position" (Anderson & Goolishian, 1992) with the express purpose of helping the client tell her or his story. " ... [T]hese might be stories about their personal projects, about their work, about their identity, and so on-and for the expression of the knowledges of life and skills of living that are associated with these stories" (White, p. 94). In these larger cultural forums, the individual's story is actually performed, and they invite an audience response: a reflective "retelling" of the first "telling" that is intended to thicken and enrich the original.

The re-telling of the telling by the audience is the second movement of a definitional ceremony. It is …