A culturally sensitive approach to therapy with immigrant families: The case of Jewish emigrants from the former Soviet Union

This article is based on accumulated clinical experience in Israel with families that emigrated from the former Soviet Union. It describes a culturally sensitive systemic intervention with two such families: a single-parent family, and a family that exhibited physical violence. Relevant cultural characteristics of family patterns and parent-child relationships in Jewish-Soviet families are reviewed. It is demonstrated how a cross-cultural perspective may affect the interpretation of presented problems and result in a less pathological perspective. It is further illustrated how universal intervention techniques combined with culturally sensitive approaches may produce positive effects in therapy.