Wisconsin Psychological Association Annual Conference 2026
I am honored to be presenting at the Wisconsin Psychological Association 2026 Annual Convention alongside Dr. Jennifer Katele. Our experiential session, “Dispersed Cultural Identities in Clinical Supervision,” will explore the complex ways culture, identity, relational dynamics, and clinical work intersect within the supervisory relationship.
As psychologists, we are often invited to think about culture through identifiable categories: race, ethnicity, nationality, language, gender, religion, and other aspects of identity. Yet lived cultural experience is rarely so neatly contained. For many individuals, cultural identity can feel dispersed across communities, generations, environments, relationships, and competing systems of values.
This complexity does not disappear when we enter the therapy room—or the supervision room.
When Cultural Identities Exist in Multiple Worlds
Dispersed cultural identities can emerge when an individual experiences belonging across multiple cultural contexts without feeling entirely situated within any single one. Different environments may activate different expectations around independence, family, emotional expression, achievement, authority, relationships, or responsibility.
Clinically, these experiences can create meaningful internal and relational tensions.
A person may deeply value autonomy while simultaneously experiencing responsibility to family and community. They may move between cultures that hold very different expectations around vulnerability, boundaries, hierarchy, or emotional expression. What appears from one perspective to be avoidance, dependence, resistance, or difficulty with boundaries may carry an entirely different meaning when understood within the person's cultural and relational context.
For clinicians, this requires more than simply knowing facts about another person's culture. It requires curiosity about how culture is psychologically experienced by the individual in front of us.
Culture Is Present in the Relationship
Psychotherapy is relational. So is supervision.
Both therapist and client bring histories, identities, assumptions, values, and experiences into the therapeutic relationship. Supervisors and supervisees do the same.
This means cultural dynamics may not always appear through explicit conversations about identity. They can emerge indirectly through questions such as:
Who feels comfortable disagreeing?
Who is expected to accommodate?
What does authority mean within this relationship?
What emotions feel permissible to express?
How is silence interpreted?
What constitutes a “healthy” boundary?
Whose definition of independence, connection, or progress is being used?
These questions become particularly important when cultural values compete—not only within a client, but between client and clinician or between supervisee and supervisor.
Looking at the Parallel Process
One of the areas we will explore during this session is parallel process within clinical supervision.
Dynamics occurring between a therapist and client can sometimes become reflected within the supervisory relationship. Feelings of uncertainty, pressure, protectiveness, frustration, distance, or responsibility may move through multiple layers of the clinical system.
Culture adds another dimension.
A supervisee's response to a client may intersect with the supervisee's own cultural experiences. The supervisor's interpretation may then be shaped by their own identities and assumptions. Examining these processes provides an opportunity to understand not simply what is happening clinically, but what the relational system may be communicating.
Rather than treating these moments as problems to immediately solve, supervision can become a space for thoughtful inquiry.
Moving Beyond Cultural Competence Toward Cultural Responsiveness
Culturally responsive psychological practice requires an ongoing willingness to examine what we bring into the room.
We cannot know every culture, nor can cultural identity be reduced to a checklist of characteristics. Cultural responsiveness instead asks clinicians to remain curious—to notice assumptions, tolerate uncertainty, recognize power and context, and allow clients to define what aspects of their identities are meaningful to them.
Our session will therefore be experiential rather than solely didactic. Through clinical case reflections, discussion of competing cultural values, exploration of dispersed cultural identities, and examination of parallel processes within supervision, participants will be invited to reflect on their own clinical experiences.
The goal is not to leave with a perfect formula for culturally responsive care.
It is to become more capable of recognizing the complexity that is already present.
Continuing the Dialogue
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this conversation and to connect with psychologists committed to advancing thoughtful, culturally responsive clinical practice.
Dispersed Cultural Identities in Clinical Supervision
Presented by Dr. Laya Reddy & Dr. Jennifer Katele
📍 Chula Vista Resort, Wisconsin Dells
📅 Friday, April 10, 2026
🕚 11:00 AM–12:30 PM
I look forward to continuing this important dialogue with colleagues across Wisconsin and exploring how greater attention to culture, relational processes, and identity can deepen both psychotherapy and clinical supervision.
