Ethics and psychotherapy: A socio-cultural perspective

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to understand ethics in psychotherapy from a socio-cultural perspective. To fulfill this aim, psychotherapy, as a social healing practice, is related to the socio-cultural issues underlying it. This perspective could offer therapists some ethical reflections about what (and why) is appropriate/inappropriate to be done in the psychotherapy field. Exemplifying and deconstructing such issues could facilitate therapists’ training, and could fulfill an ethical need for more critical thinkers. This paper works toward these aims by first placing psychotherapy in a socio-cultural context and exemplifying the bidirectional influence between psychotherapy and society. This will be related to an ethics perspective because it implies what therapists and clients are entitled to do and how appropriate psychotherapy aims and means are socially constructed. Second, it focuses on the three main ethical challenges in psychotherapy; i.e., trust, caring and power. These three issues are closely related and cannot be properly understood and developed unless they are placed in a socially constructed practice context.