Moral Stealth: How “Correct Behavior” Insinuates Itself into Psychotherapeutic Practice. By Arnold Goldberg. Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press, 2007.  150 pp.

In an era of increasing anxiety about negative publicity, psychoanalysts have become increasingly concerned about boundary crossings and other moral indiscretions. Our professional organizations have mandated codes of ethics, prescriptions for moral behavior, and the establishment of ethics committees to address breaches of moral conduct that occur among our colleagues.

Within this context, Goldberg's Moral Stealth: Horn “Correct Behavior” Insinuates Itself into Psychotherapeutic Practice attempts to examine the impact of such moral prescriptions on the practicing analyst and pleads for a new approach to our thinking about ethics and morals. This slim volume of thirteen essays espouses a psychoanalytic mode of thinking about such issues that tolerates ambiguity, contradiction, and doubt, with the ultimate goal of a more consciously considered resolution. Goldberg's prescription rests upon his observation that unconscious moral judgments “stealthily” infiltrate our attitudes toward our patients and ourselves in relationship to our patients. Dangers arise when we apply moral judgments to issues that are not in themselves matters of morality, as well as when we fail to examine our seemingly non-negotiable or unconditional positions. Goldberg's approach is at once scholarly and personal as