You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Jeremy Holmes, himself the co-author of a well-regarded book on the ethical and philosophical basis of psychotherapy,1 has written the Foreword to this volume of essays. As he says, the ‘discrepancy between the ethical standards expected of a profession and the realities of psychotherapeutic work is a crucial theme for therapists’. The editors, Fiona Palmer Barnes and Lesley Murdin, who have both served on professional ethics committees, explore this discrepancy both in the individual chapters they have contributed, and also through their choice of the authors of a broad spectrum of chapters. Palmer Barnes, in the introduction to her chapter, points out that:
Since the 1970s our multicultural society and political leaders have challenged and changed earlier assumptions and the consensual ethos following the Second World War has given way to a diversity of individual views and value systems. As a result, issues once thought of as shared between practitioner and patient may now be found to reflect either a shared or a different ethical and value base.
The various contributors address some of the challenging ethical questions thrown up by psychotherapy as it is practised in different contexts in Britain in the early part of the 21st century.
Early chapters offer definitions and philosophical principles, moving into considerations of the therapist's responsibility to the other, for example around intervention when concerned over a colleague's fitness for the work. Illuminating such concerns, Petruska Clarkson draws on her research study into psychotherapists’ views on ethical practice. She also considers complaints against psychotherapists, and worries about situations where patients did not complain, for example, around matters of sexual abuse in therapy.
Informed consent is an ethical matter mentioned in several chapters. Josephine Klein, writing on assessment, points to a significant function of the assessment interview, namely that of showing the patient a little of wha