What is good? How can we be certain that our decisions are ethical when there are so many conflicting claims as what constitutes right action? Is it one’s intent, or the outcome of one’s doing? Is morality even a totally conscious affair, or is our judgement influenced by unconscious internal and external factors outside of the rational mind, if there even is such a thing? What role does culture play in choosing the right path, and does that mean that right and wrong are relative? And where does one choose to situate oneself in the I-Thou relationship, and why?
Psychoanalysis has its own complex take on ethics that addresses the stance of the analyst when faced with the subject of truth, either within us or the the other. Who are we beholden to, whose interests do we foster in our selections of what we say to patients and how does our countertransference get in the way of their ability to engage in total honesty? What is the ethic of uncompromising psychoanalysis?Unfortunately no encounter with a patient can be a pure I-Thou experience since we practice in a sys- tem that involves family, insurance and money, the mental health system and sometimes even govern- ment. Based on the ethical positions studied we will examine the options that therapists have as well as the dangers lurking in the unconscious compliance with unspoken ethical assumptions.
Ethical awareness is strongly cultural in nature, for us and our patients. There are major seemingly ex- clusive positions on the nature of humans, and what is good for them and society. What happens when we are in a bind between honoring our patients’ values and our own? An example are the differing ideas on what our Western culture calls domestic violence. And the spectrum of societal governance values from comunal socialistic to anarchic libertarian is wide. Can one even analyze someone without a working knowledge of the symbolic order that founds their existence? And if our job is to bear witness to whatev- er the other’s experience, how do we create in ourselves a space open to sometimes alien differenceHealers have certain obligations to take care of themselves in order not be a danger to patients. Just as surgeons accumulate a certain amount of germy crud on their hands, those who work with the mind also accrue emotional aggravations from work and the rest of life that need caring for, lest they rub off on patients. Self care is as necessary as hand washing and scrubbing. Therapists are often in an ethical bind between duty to self and others, one of the many issues that involve one of ethics’ linchpins: boundaries.