While traditional, individually-oriented therapies focus on the individual at the expense of the environment and culture, multiculturalism recognizes the broad scope of dimensions of race, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, gender, age, disability, class status, education, religious/spiritual orientation, and other cultural dimensions and its impact on identity development. As such. multiculturalism recognizes that race, ethnicity, and sex (or sexual preference) have an inescapable effect on the way people think and/or the values they hold or are capable of holding. All of these are critical aspects of an individual’s ethnic/racial and personal identity, and in multicultural counseling the both the clinician and client are encouraged to be cognizant of issues related to all of these dimensions of culture and each dimensions’ unique issues and concerns. One of the goals of multicultural therapy is to help the client feel free to express their uniqueness within their preferred cultural style. The process should help clients identify the self that may have been suppressed earlier in life and recognise how pressure from others and from society generally can force them to try to be someone other than their unique self.