Ethical Issues in the Psychotherapies

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, Feb 11, 1988 - Psychology - 192 pages
Mental health professionals face many complex questions in the course of their work with clients and patients. Among the most difficult are dilemmas that involve ethical issues. This book presents a forthright exploration of these dilemmas and the ethical considerations they raise. Drawing on extensive interviews, the author identifies common ethical problems that practitioners encounter. What happens, for example, when personal interests intrude into therapy? How can the therapist make an accurate assessment of his or her appropriateness as a care provider for a particular patient? What about confidentiality? How are problematic financial arrangements best addressed? The author goes on to show how these dilemmas may be intensified by the unique assumptions of different therapeutic orientations--individual, group, family, marital, and organizational--and how professionals can learn from such experiences to better understand and apply their particular approach. This analysis--and the words of the therapists themselves--provide both a guide to practice and a unique store of experience for the growing number of researchers and students concerned with ethical problems in psychotherapy.
 

Contents

Introduction
3
1 Ethical Dilemmas in Everyday Practice
6
2 Ethics and Negative Effects of Psychotherapies
30
3 Ideologies of Psychotherapies and the Values of Psychotherapists
43
4 Ethical Challenges of Individual Psychotherapy
60
A Comparative Approach
74
6 The Ethical Minefield of Marital and Family Therapies
90
7 Ethical Issues in Organizational Therapy
106
8 Legal and Ethical Issues
122
9 Where We Are Now Where We Go from Here
140
References
151
Index
165
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