EFTA RESEARCH CAFE: Cultural adaptation for training family therapy and systemic practice – using a multidimensional ecosystemic comparative approach in family therapy research

With Bernhild Pfautsch, PhD

Tabor Protestant University of Applied Sciences

For the culture-sensitive further development of a tertiary education in systemic family therapy in Cambodia, a qualitative sequential triangulation study with expert interviews and group discussions was carried out in the Southeast Asian country with local and international mental health professionals.

The research project was committed to the approach of decolonial research, which assumes that Western research ideology goes hand in hand with certain values, biases and practices that influence knowledge production and have been influenced by it. Therefore, a bottom-up approach was preferred, which has its reference in the present cultural context and aims to support local knowledge production. Therefore, following a multidimensional comparative approach, the relevant fields of reference for family therapy in Cambodia were explored and evaluated using a qualitative content analysis method. For the socio-scientific interpretation of intercultural data, the participation of culture-familiar co-interpreters is required, as was done by a Cambodian colleague to check the intercoder agreement. Following the sequential design of the study, relevant aspects from the interview results were used as impulse questions for the group discussions. The results refer to explicit cultural aspects for a Cambodian family therapy and implications for the conception of corresponding trainings.

Bernhild Pfautsch, PhD, (Germany) is a psychologist, family therapist and trauma counselor working with families, children, and young people for years. As peace worker with the Civil Peace Service of the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) in 2015 -2018, she initiated systemic family therapy training in collaboration with the Royal University in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Still connected in an advisory capacity with the Southeast-Asian university, now she works as a professor at Protestant University of Applied Sciences Marburg, Germany.
 

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