Social-cultural anthropology has dealt with mankind from so many different angles and with such a variety of approaches that it is understandably difficult to get a handle on what exactly an anthropologist does. Nowadays anthropology goes everywhere where people are acting and making sense of these actions. If any human grouping is fair game for anthropological study, this of course multiplies the possible fields and questions for study to an infinite degree. An unavoidable consequence of the growth of any discipline is that we find some fragmentation, with scholars divided according to schools, research issues, geographic areas of specialization, theoretical orientations. With all of this riotous diversity, as anthropological insiders we somehow—and not without difficulty—identify a common thread in the discipline in its status as the science of culture. The fact that anthropology is not widely taught as a discipline in the standard high school curricula in most countries adds to the aura of mystery and misperception among the general public. Especially through the ethnographic method, anthropology created tools for studying and understanding the seemingly strange actions and conceptions of Other peoples.

The starting point for this discussion is to take four concepts from anthropology, the study of people in cultures, and to apply these to highlight areas in counseling. The four concepts are emic, etic, culture and culture-bound. This discussion takes the notion of cross-cultural counseling and states that when a therapist and client meet there is a cross-cultural communication taking place; regardless of the racial educational or socio-economic similarities between the two parties. The author wishes to highlight some areas in counseling where greater awareness is required to create a holistic counseling philosophy and to improve the ethics, power sharing, efficacy and appropriateness of therapy.