This paper evaluates the effectiveness of cross-cultural counseling and advocates a "culture-using" counseling perspective as an alternative to the "etic-emic" approach. The author argues that, currently, counseling is taken as the "given"; culture is treated as a variable in counseling effectiveness; and counseling is never evaluated as a cultural phenomena in itself. The culture-using perspective assumes that: (1) counseling is Western society's form of the helping relationship; (2) qualitative differences in the human experience are most likely represented by culture; and (3) the culture that wishes to adopt the counseling framework is aware of and can articulate its own unique cultural experience. (JCD)