Values & Ethics in Counselling and Psychotherapy

Gillian Proctor, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781849206143
  9781849206136
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473904385
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

This book offers an introduction to values and ethics in counselling and psychotherapy, helping you to develop the ethical awareness needed throughout the counselling process. The book covers:

-  Context and emergence of ethics in counselling

-  Exercises to explore personal and professional values

-  Tools to develop ethical mindfulness

-  Differences between therapeutic models

-  Relational ethics

-  Ethical dilemmas and issues

-  Practice issues including confidentiality, boundaries and autonomy versus beneficence.

Using in-depth case studies of counselling students, the author demonstrates the constant relevance of values and ethics to counselling and psychotherapy, equipping trainees with the tools to successfully navigate values and ethics in their professional practice.

 

PART ONE

Values

ONE	What are your personal values?

Introduction

This chapter will encourage and suggest exercises for us to assess our own values and beliefs. It will touch on the notion of identity and the relationship between identity and values. It will consider how we perceive the values of others and whether sharing values is an important foundation of relationships. We will think about origins of values and the concept of ‘conscience’. Each of the exercises will be illustrated by at least one of the four students completing them, so we learn more about each of their identities and values.

What are values?

I argue that every decision we make is underpinned by what we value in life: every action and inaction. Our values shape everything we do; they underpin human agency, choice and autonomy. Values express what it means to be human and make choices about our behaviour. Values are inescapable and inherent in our behaviour and everyday decisions. For Sartre, we are always engaged in a world of values, saying, ‘my acts cause values to spring up like partridges’ (1943/2003: 62). Behaviour acquires value through the culturally agreed social significances of acts. Sartre explains: ‘Values are sown on my path as thousands of little real demands, like the signs which order us to keep off the grass’ (1943/2003: 62). How much do you think values influence or even determine your behaviour?

Exercise

1 Think of the first decision or choice you made today.

2 Explore what your options were at that time.

3 Work out what value was behind you picking the option you picked.

4 Repeat for the next three decisions you made and see if there are any commonalities in the list of values you acquire.

Maxine

The first decision Maxine thought about was the decision on whether or not to turn up to the counselling course that morning. She had been very nervous and apprehensive and had identified that she was worried what her ex-counsellor and new tutor would think of her in this new context. She had felt fairly confident in their therapy relationship that her counsellor had liked her and she did not want this to change. However, Maxine did not want to discuss this situation with her peers or with her tutor so thought again what decision to discuss. She instead chose to talk about her decision about what to wear that morning. She noted that she hadn’t wanted to look as though she had made an effort to dress up but wanted to appear informal and casual. She also noted that in one of her favourite tops, she was particularly aware of the shape of her breasts and she did not want to draw attention to this or for other students to perceive her as overtly sexual or sexually available so she rejected this option. She was also aware she would be sitting still all day and wanted to wear something she felt comfortable in so did not choose a pair of trousers that were a little too tight around her waist. She identified that the values she had prioritised in her decision of what to wear were comfort, wanting to belong and not intimidate or distance people, and wanting to feel good about herself (feeling attractive but not overtly sexual which to her would feel desperate or needy as opposed to self-contained and content).

Rubina

Rubina could not decide what decision to discuss and finally decided to discuss the decision of what to discuss! She found it difficult to assess how much information she wanted to disclose about herself and her life, as she did in her work. She considered that the values important to her about this decision were privacy, openness and humility. She was interested to think more about the value of humility and consider how much she felt vain and selfish to talk about herself, and concluded that this value was possibly much more deeply held and influential than she had previously realised. She decided that this course was an opportunity to challenge her usual mode of saying very little about herself.

We can see from these examples that our personal values are many and various and different ones may be prioritised at different times, depending on our physical and emotional needs at the time and the context of each decision.

Identity

To the extent that our values are personal to us (although developed intersubjectively), they are connected to how we describe or think about our identity. I see identity not as fixed but as developing and being actively shaped by us according to our values and in response to our context. The features or characteristics we think are important to describe ourselves reflect our values. Values are the root of ethical decisions and Sartre is adamant that there is no justification for our values; we are free to choose them. Our values, developed from our social intersubjective context, shape who we become and this in turn further shapes our values.

Exercise

This and the following two exercises came from Sue Wood^*, who worked with me on the School of Health’s Postgraduate Certificate in Citizenship and Community Mental Health, University of Bradford. She works as a freelance creative writing facilitator with at-risk groups and in professional health training.

1 Choose three adjectives to describe yourself.

2 Which three adjectives do you think you would have chosen 10 years ago?

3 Which three adjectives do you think you would have chosen 15 or 20 years ago?

Anne

Anne completed the exercise above very quickly. Without hesitation she described herself currently as caring, responsible and fun. She thought more carefully about how she was 10 years ago and situated herself in recollecting that at that time her children would all have been in primary school and she was very involved in their everyday lives. She chose for that time: caring, exhausted and proud. Thinking back further, she reminded herself of her life 20 years ago, before she had become a mother, excited to have just met her husband and just begun her career in teaching. She chose for then: excited, loving and hopeful.

Tom

Tom spent a lot of time trying to work out which three adjectives to pick, finding great difficulty as he experienced himself as changing so much in his moods. After much deliberation he chose: self-confident, emotional and concerned. Thinking back to being 18 was a distressing thought for Tom as being diagnosed with a major psychiatric illness was not a positive experience for him, although the resulting medication did make his life temporarily easier. The adjectives he decided on were: unhappy, unconfident and worried. Finally thinking back to being eight years old was easier for Tom. He described himself aged eight as: carefree, emotional and interested.

The students spent much time discussing how they saw themselves and how this had changed over time, noting what characteristics had remained constant and which had changed or developed and why. They noted how their identities can be vulnerable to how others see or treat them, and also discussed with some sadness what parts of their identities they felt they had lost and would like to reclaim. They also noted how their descriptions of themselves were so dependent on their self-esteem and how positively or negatively they saw themselves at any one time. As a result, their tutor suggested a further exercise.

Exercise

1 Choose three adjectives to describe how you’d like to be.

2 Compare these to the adjectives you have chosen to describe how you think you are. If these are very different, this can be an indication of low self-esteem, whereas if they are similar, this suggests high self-regard or esteem.

The students

The group discussed this exercise and its usefulness as a measure of self-esteem, and generally agreed they felt it was more useful to help them identify areas for self-development than to use as a measure. They discussed how it highlighted that their identities are connected to their values, with the characteristics they chose showing what they value, whether they are characteristics they would like or that they think they already have.

Identity and roles

Our identity is also tied up in how we see ourselves in terms of the roles we fulfil. The roles that are central to our identity may say something about our values too.

Exercise

1 List all the roles that you have in life and list them in order of how central each is to your identity.

2 Write a poem, beginning each line with ‘I am a …’. Include all your roles; more than one can complete each line.

3 Think about how much this poem reflects your identity.

4 What aspects of your identity does it miss?

Anne

Anne listed in order of centrality to her identity: mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, listener, Brownie leader, singer, swimmer, reader, cleaner, cook, ironer, tidier of clutter, appreciator of flowers, gardener, accountant, first-aider. She wrote the following poem:

I am a mother, a wife, a daughter and sister,

I am a woman in relationships.

I am a helper, a listener, a Brownie leader;

I am a singer, a swimmer, a reader and gardener;

I clean, I tidy, I iron, I count money and

I apply plasters to sores.

She reflected how much time she spends in her life fulfilling roles that are important to her sense of identity as a caring and nurturing woman. She also reflected that singing, swimming and reading are important parts of her identity that she rarely fulfils now, and decided she must prioritise these activities more highly. She was glad that the counselling course will involve a lot of reading and is determined to make time for this and be clear with her children that she is unavailable for their needs when she is focusing on this.

Values and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Advertisement
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Values
• Part II Therapy Ethics
• Part III Practice Issues
• Appendices
• References
• Index