curiousgeorge wrote: If on the other hand you are looking for talk-therapy then yeah I can see how a fellow Westerner might help. But then, isn't talk-therapy all about mirroring the subject making race irrelevant?
I wouldn't call it mirroring, it's more helping to lead one along a path of understanding.
I attended one long ago due to the 'emotional place/state' I was in as a result of someone close to me. Figuring out what was up with that other person took the psych about two hours discussion. Wow, what an epiphany!!!
Some further sessions followed which were effectively 'psych rehab' and then 'pysch defence', i.e. understanding what aspects of my character subconsciously facilitated the 'it takes two-to-tango' situation.
A bit of a life-saver at the time, very interesting as I learned a lot about personalities/human-nature that I would never have even imagined, and very useful for the future. All achieved via 1-1 talk therapy.
And no I can't imagine having gone that deeply into myself with a person from outside of my culture; you need to feel a bond. I don't know, perhaps my thinking boils down to why risk making it harder for yourself right from square one.
