The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy (PDF)

Jefferson M. Fish, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at St. John's University, New York, where he has served as Department Chair and also as Director of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology.  His specialties are cross-cultural psychology and clinical psychology.  Within cross-cultural psychology his writings have dealt mainly with varying cultural conceptions of "race," the "race"-IQ debate, and Brazil; and he has been a Fulbright scholar in Brazil and China.  Within clinical psychology, he has written widely on psychotherapy as a social influence process, on social and cultural factors in therapy, and on brief therapy-including brief behavioral, cognitive, strategic, systemic, and solution focused therapies, and on the use of hypnosis in brief therapy.  He has also been active in the field of drug policy, and his publications include international and American sub-cultural perspectives on the issue.



Dr. Fish is the author of Culture and Therapy: An Integrative Approach, Placebo Therapy, and Dimensões da Empatia Terapêutica (Dimensions of Therapeutic Empathy, published in Portuguese); he is the editor of Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth, Drugs and Society: U. S. Public Policy, Is Our Drug Policy Effective? Are There Alternatives?, and How to Legalize Drugs; and he is the co-editor of Handbook of Culture, Therapy, and Healing, Principles of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy, and Psychology: Perspectives and Practice.  He is the author of more than a hundred journal articles, book chapters, and other works; and he has served on the editorial boards of eight journals in the United States, Brazil, and India, and has been a consulting editor or invited reviewer for eight others.

Dr. Fish is a past Treasurer of the International Council of Psychologists, a past Chair of the Psychology Section of theNew York Academy of Sciences, a past President of the Division of Academic Psychology of the New York State

From the reviews:

“The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy makes creative and important contributions to understanding therapy as a social influence process, to broadening the definition of the social and cultural context of therapy, and to applying these insights clinically. Its discussion of race is particularly thorough, thought-provoking, and useful for understanding clients from varied cultural backgrounds. The book is highly recommended not only for therapists and therapists in training, but for psychologists and social scientists interested in race and social influence."
- Irving Kirsch
Professor of Psychology
University of Hull, England

“With a unique background in psychology and cross-cultural experience, Professor Jefferson Fish has written an important book that could not have been written by anyone else. The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy is a clear, highly readable, and insightful analysis of how race came to be a worldview in the United States. It is a cultural category that parades as universal and scientific. With assists from a careful reading of scientific and cross-cultural research, Fish skillfully explains why race is a local (cultural) idea rather than a scientific universal. This book will be of great use to anyone interested in how a cultural concept becomes powerful, the work that this particular concept does in distorting perceptions, and especially how race gets into fields of study, in this case psychology and psychotherapy.”
- Alan Goodman
Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty, Hampshire College
Past President, American Anthropological Association

“A good course in anthropology teaches that biological races do not exist among humans but that culture is a real phenomenon that greatly influences human behavior. If anthropologists are correct, then many psychologists’ assumptions that biological races are real and that human cultural influences on behavior are not extremely important are