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It is acknowledged by psychiatrists, psychologists, and philosophers alike that the ways in which values enter into the theory and practice of psychotherapy are pervasive and exceedingly complex. The chief aim of this paper will be to explore these varied and complex intersections between values and psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic concerns, in theory and practice. The analysis presented here will be largely classificatory, for it would seem that such an effort is of crucial necessity for introducing greater clarity and achieving a better understanding of issues that are of considerable importance to individuals and society. Moreover, a clear understanding of the multifarious ways in which values are embedded in psychoanalytic theory and practice is significant both for the further development of psychoanalytic theory and for the implementation of therapeutic practice, policy recommendations, and social reforms.
In addition to its import for professional and lay concerns in the field of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, this inquiry bears on long-standing philosophical issues in value theory and epistemology—notably, the distinction and intersection between facts and values. Although I shall remain somewhat neutral with respect to traditional and contemporary philosophical positions on the fact-value question, it will emerge in what follows that the distinction is exceedingly difficult to maintain in a rigorous way, both in the explication of psychoanalytic concepts and in the application of those concepts to persons in identifying and treating mental illness.
A distinction can be made in a rough and ready way between general value questions that enter into a theory or practice, and specific moral or ethical precepts and judgments that may be embodied in a theory or institutionalized in practice. I shall be treating the general value questions and issues here, with reference to specific ethical codes, rules, or precepts only as they arise in examples o