dc.description.abstract | The aim of my research was to identify social representations concerning
psychotherapy ethics among psychotherapists in advanced specialist-level
training. The 23 participants, 9 men and 14 women, were primarily recruited
from training groups representing four psychotherapy orientations: family,
trauma, cognitive analytic, and psychoanalytic orientations. The data were
collected in focus group discussions, where each of the four groups met in three
largely self-directed sessions to discuss the ethics of psychotherapy. The
transcripts of the discussions were analysed using the method of dialogical
analysis for focus groups. The analysis identified four recurrent and explicit big
themes, each reflecting an underlying implicit social representation. All social
representations discovered were dilemma-like: the interlocutors found solid
arguments and justifications not only for their own but also for opposing views.
The first recurrent theme concerned external regulation of psychotherapy, such
as laws and ethical codes. The social representation underlying the discussion
was the dilemma between personal and rule-based ethics: who has the right to define
the ethical good. The second recurrent theme, concerning the boundaries in
psychotherapy, addressed the fundamental nature of psychotherapeutic
relationship: how to be both human and professional in relation to the client. The
third and fourth recurrent themes addressed the values of psychotherapy from
two different angles. First, the discussion on the psychotherapist’s influence on
the client focused on the conflicting views of psychotherapy as value-free or valueladen.
Even though the interlocutors considered psychotherapy value-laden,
they found it important to defend their stance, which was evidence for the third
social representation. Second, the psychotherapists addressed the various
parties whose values must be taken into account in a psychotherapeutic
relationship; whose values should be preferred emerged as a social representation.
The interlocutors also discussed explicitly the question of how ethics should be
covered in psychotherapy education. Their suggestions are presented in this
thesis.
Keywords: psychotherapy, ethics, professional ethics, values, social
representations, focus group discussions, dialogical analysis | en |