This article illustrates the state of the art for mental health counseling in Italy through a historic and postmodern perspective.The context of Italian mental health counseling is complex and full of new and old premises, events, and arguments. On the one side, the way counseling has developed and is perceived in Italy results from the intersection of old cultural legacies, such as Christianity, and new challenges, such as a multicultural and multiethnic society. On the other side, the development of mental health counseling in Italy is the result of the encounter between the pragmatic, optimist U.S. counseling and the phenomenological, hermeneutic traditions of European schools. The article ends with an exploration of the potentials that may arise from an ongoing communication between U.S. and Italian mental health professionals.
How we perceive other cultures is arguably of increasing importance in contemporary society, impacting on realms such as international relations, business and tourism. The qualitative research reported in this paper was carried out in the UK and in Italy and adopted a Personal Construct Psychology approach. It aimed to explore intercultural perceptions in a sample of people who had some degree of experience with the 'other' culture, and a unique feature of the research is that it asked how those perceptions might be affected if people from both cultures are given access to each other's perceptions. There was considerable commonality in the perceptions of the English and Italian participants, and each culture envied some of the qualities of the other. However, they initially struggled to accommodate how they were seen by the other and endeavoured to resolve difference by construing at a more superordinate level. The findings also suggest that national identity is rooted in the construing of others' constructions, achieved through relationship and comparison. How we perceive other cultures is arguably of increasing importance in contemporary society, impacting on realms such as international relations, business and tourism. The qualitative research reported in this paper was carried out in the UK and in Italy, and aimed to explore intercultural perceptions in a sample of people who had some degree of experience with the 'other' culture. A unique feature of the research is that it asked how those perceptions might be affected if people from both cultures are given access to each other's perceptions.Perceptions and stereotypes of people from different nations around the world have previously received a good deal of attention from researchers. For example, Linssen and Hagendoorn (1994) asked teenage students from seven western European countries to rate those nationalities on several trait dimensions. The results suggested that the more northern peoples, for example Germans and English, were perceived as more likely to have qualities such as 'efficient' and 'scientific' than southern European countries like Italy and France. The southern nationalities were rated as more emotional, enjoying life and more religious than northern nationalities. Italians were also seen as more empathic, helpful and friendly than the English.According to Lönnqvist, Yijälä, Jasinskaja-Lahti and Markku Verkasalo (2012), there has been very little research on the accuracy of national stereotypes and they call for more research in this area. What research there is seems to suggest that, in the absence of significant personal experience with the other culture, perceptions of national stereotypes tend to be inaccurate. Germany and the Netherlands to rate their liking for the other nations and to rate similarity to their own nation on traits such as 'friendly', 'tolerant', 'practical' and 'domineering', as well as measuring the degree of participants' contact with those nations. The aim of this research was to assess the usefulness of So...
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