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The topic of difference raises important challenges in conceptualization and intervention in clinical practice. As a clinical supervisor, I've often been asked about how much sociocultural issues should be weighed when compared with complex intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts. In many ways, mainstream clinical conceptualizations have continued to view sociocultural issues as separate from internal psychological conflicts. This dilemma of how much to privilege the issue of diversity in the therapeutic relationship has not been limited to any particular theoretical orientation, but rather an indicator of its marginalized status in the mental health professions. While there has been substantial progress in raising awareness about diversity and developing cultural competency guidelines within professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association, many clinicians struggle with how to implement cultural competency within their practices. Cultural competency guidelines may be experienced as an imposition or intrusion on clinicians' existing theoretical constructions of their clients' psychological problems and related recovery. In other instances, clinicians may value the importance of sociocultural realities and yet feel inadequately equipped to work with their clients in culturally appropriate ways. While I suspect that these types of experiences are fairly common, there is typically little open conversation that occurs with regard to diversity, particularly across divergent perspectives on the meaning of difference. Such conversations are typically felt to be risky.
J. Christopher Muran in his edited volume, Dialogues on Difference: Studies of Diversity in the Therapeutic Relationship, has taken the opportunity to begin such a dialogue among clinicians with different theoretical perspectives on issues of diversity, including psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, and humanistic viewpoints. In introducing the book, Muran sets the stage for the dial