Social Justice, Multicultural Counseling, and Practice

This third edition book offers a paradigm shift in thinking (from binary to complex) and enables visibility for the intersectionality of multiple identities that range from privileged to oppressed. For example, real people’s heterogeneous racial identities within the same racial group are visible. A paradigm shift in learning (from conceptual to transformative) connects conceptual learning (cognition) to their experience (affect). “…. transformation does not simply emerge due to the individual’s awareness…. but is experienced” (Benetka & Joerchel, 2016, p. 22). Uncensored first-person (subjective) written responses to specific questions to access unconscious and implicit bias will connect the writer’s experience to conceptual learning of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Writing in third person (objective) interrupts the transformative aspect by bypassing the accessibility of inner experience. Writing in first-person connects the writer to their experience which allows the unconscious to be accessed if it is practiced on a regular basis.  This book is for everyone who wants to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion measures by learning to access their unconscious bias. Understanding social justice and equity and good intentions alone do not lead to accessing unconscious bias.

Dr. Heesoon Jun was born in Seoul, South Korea and was socialized by a family which valued honor, commitment, religious and intellectual freedom but held implicit bias on race and class.  She came to the US as a young adult to study psychology as an undergraduate.  There, her sense of self shattered as her status changed from majority to minority, privileged to oppressed, and self-confident to self-doubting student. Dr. Jun’s bicultural and bilingual experiences, being an academician and practitioner, searching for balance between two world-views have been instrumental in emphasizing providers’ awareness of their own cultural values and biases in order to understand clients’ world views; paradigm shifts in thinking (from conventional to holistic); and learning (from conceptual to transformative) cognitive neuroscience and mindfulness practice in order to walk the walk of social justice and multicultural counseling competencies. Dr. Jun has a Master’s degree in clinical psychology from Radford University and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Washington.  Currently, she resides in Washington State where she is a licensed psychologist with a part-time private practice and is a professor of psychology at Evergreen State College.