Commentary on “behavior therapy and a culturally diverse society: Forging an alliance”

We agree with Iwamasa (1997) that it is important to study and to consider issues of cultural diversity within behavior therapy. The timing to do so seems ripe, now that there are effective behavioral assessment and treatment strategies in place. Furthermore, issues of cultural diversity, and particularly Iwamasa's paper, provide behavior therapists with an opportunity to revisit some important issues within behavior therapy: topographic descriptions of cultures vs. functional descriptions of clients, group-based cultural descriptions versus individual-based clinical practice, and general principles versus idiographic applications.