The Power of Optimism—When the Therapist Isn't Pessimistic

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 2004, Vol 49(5), 635–639. Reviews Brief Psychotherapy With the Latino Immigrant Client (see record 2002-01049-000). The book is written to assist psychotherapists in treating Latino immigrants, de Rios approaches her subject from the perspective of an accomplished medical anthropologist who has extensively studied American Shamanism and has also worked as a licensed marriage and family therapist in California. As a result, her text is replete with good clinical examples to illustrate her points, and she provides a good overview of many issues important in treating Latino immigrants. This text is especially good in its coverage of the “biology of hope” (p. 8), multiple sections outlining acculturative stresses, cultural elements, and customs of traditional Central and South American Latino cultures; the use of metaphors and dichos, countertransference; and an entire chapter on the significance of a non-Latino therapist treating a Latino/a. She also highlights the importance of understanding socioeconomic status differences between the therapist and client, as well as differences between Latinos of different socioeconomic cultures, de Rios repeatedly refers to the connection between biology, culture, and socioeconomic factors, thought and mood. She provides excellent suggestions for communicating this idea to clients through simple explanations accompanied by illustrations, especially as it relates to depression and anxiety. The text provides a good overview of what a therapist might encounter in working with a Latino immigrant, including noteworthy mention of pain control and posttraumatic stress disorder, tuberculosis, alcohol abuse, and sexual dysfunction. In this work, de Rios provides an interesting glimpse into the life of a (real-life) mental health provider who has coped with managed mental health care and shortened treatment, suspicious clients, and her own counter-transferences as a non-Latino and feminist woman. Having appreciated some of the very real strengths of the text, I was disappointed to find a serious limitation in this work. In the context of an excellent presentation of the biology of hope, it was truly ironic to find that de Rios often relied on unsubstantiated negative generalizations to describe Latino immigrants. Although there were other limitations, this was most serious because it undermined her credibility as an authority on these issues and established a pessimistic frame for some issues. Some of her assertions were disturbing and, in some instances, somewhat misleading. So, as much as I really loved some parts of this text, I also found a few parts offensive and questionable and reluctantly recommend the book for master's level students and only if it is a supplementary text to another more empirically substantiated work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)