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Having been asked to facilitate a seminar on ‘Ethical Thinking’, I found myself wondering, ‘Is there such a thing as unethical thinking?’ Essentially, ethics is about the examination of our conduct rather than our thinking — are we behaving reasonably and ensuring that we maintain ourselves in the service of the patient as agreed within the process of negotiating a treatment contract? Yet, in (psycho)analytic practice, of whichever school, a large part of the activity in the service of the patient is not observable behaviour. We examine ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, to ascertain what this may tell us about our patients. Crucially, we must ensure that the internal activity of being with and processing their impact upon is properly translated in offering interpretations, formulating questions, making treatment decisions or engaging in other observable activity. For example, we must ensure that evoked feelings of hatred are contained and processed, not enacted nor denied: in that sense one might suggest that there could only be ‘unethical not-thinking’ — but how sustainable is even that position when we consider concepts such as attacks on the capacity to think? The use of counter-transference has been referred to as a ‘nodal point of clinical practice and ethical debate wherein the professionals themselves are the subjects’ (Sutton 1997). When we apply psychoanalytical principles in any area of mental health, we place ourselves in the firing-line — it is a very personal professional issue. Assistance in acquiring, using and maintaining the tools of ethical analysis for this process is welcome and essential.
The Ethical Attitude in Analytic Practice brings together papers by practitioners from both the psychoanalytic and analytical psychology schools on the basis that the aspirations and expectations of ethically sound practice are shared, fundamental principles. The book considers theory and applied issues across a breadth from individual therapy/analytic treat