Psychotherapy, Ethics, and Society

Ethical issues are the stuff of psychotherapy, and in fact Freud envisaged the process as one in which an unexamined, irrational and oppressive conscience gives way to one more benignly rooted in reason. Therapists endeavour to be non-judgemental, and, indeed, are no more qualified to pass judgement on others than anyone else; do they nevertheless learn anything about ethics from their disciplined listening? This is a very live issue at the moment, faced, as we are, with movements that cause great suffering in the name of religious or moral regeneration. Can psychotherapy throw any light on this terrible paradox, or contribute any ideas as to how we might contain, if not prevent the barbarism it sanctions? Can it offer us any insights into a different, more inclusive kind of ethics, and, if so, can we glean any guidance from it as to how we might further it? These are the questions the book explores, drawing on psychoanalytic thinking on these issues for over a century and illustrated by the author’s work with individuals over the past three decades.