Ethics in Therapeutic Contexts

Why is ethical reasoning important in psychotherapeutic practice? How do the ethical issues get involved in everyday clinical work with patients? The course is a chance to promote ethical reflection on various aspects of psychotherapeutic process and underlines the importance of ethics, as one of the major pillars of psychotherapy. During the course meetings the participants will be invited to take part in open discussions, not only regarding general ethical issues, but also specific ethical problems that a psychotherapist would face during his/her practice. The texts suggested for the course provide with both theoretical background of ethical reflection on one hand, as well as specific, practical issues of everyday practice on the other.

Why is ethical reasoning important in psychotherapeutic practice? How do the ethical issues get involved in everyday clinical work with patients?

The course is a chance to promote ethical reflection on various aspects of psychotherapeutic process and underlines the importance of ethics, as one of the major pillars of psychotherapy.

During the course meetings the participants will be invited to take part in open discussions, regarding general ethical issues on one hand, but also very specific ethical problems that a psychotherapist would face during his/her practice. The texts suggested for the course provide not only with theoretical background of ethical reflection, but offer an insight to specific, practical issues of everyday practice.

The course is divided into two sections. The first section covers the issues of ethical standards that are based on deontology of psychotherapy (codes of ethics). The codes are limited in their usefulness in practice. At times they can be too rigid or narrow as they cannot reflect all the varied circumstances of professional life. Ethics is only partially about the rules - it is as much about emotion, intuition and relationships as it is about reason.

The second section of the course is meant to be a response to that statement. The focus is put on more specific problems, such as ethical standards/law relationship, money and its meaning in therapeutic process, ethical issues in different therapeutic contexts (f.e. individual vs couple therapy), boundaries in therapeutic relationship, and ethical aspects of psychotherapeutic training etc.

The course is meant not only to demonstrate various standards of psychotherapeutic practice, but also to promote skills of ethical reflection and attitude.