In the following essay I will outline and clarify the extent to which my own values, principles and ethics correspond to those of professional counselling and psychotherapy. In doing so I will demonstrate how such personal and moral values dovetail with both my political convictions and my fidelity to the counselling profession. Secondly, and more controversially, I will argue that the principle of autonomy, so vital to counselling and democratic politics, has been undermined by a ‘therapeutic’ political culture that has reconceived personhood in terms of dependence and vulnerability.
I will maintain that certain values and principles, despite being consistent – in a psychotherapeutic context – with cultivating autonomy and the realisation of human potential, are, in the political sphere, antithetical to it. While this may suggest an ambivalence, on my part, towards ‘therapeutic values’ this essay is in fact as much concerned to defend those values against their misuse and corruption by political elites bereft of values of their own.
Before exploring the contrasting ways in which therapeutic values are interpreted and applied today, and the consequences for, in particular, individual autonomy and self-governance, it will be useful to provide a brief outline of the differences and continuity between the concepts of ‘values’, ‘ethics’, ‘morals’ and ‘principles’. According to Chippendale (2001), ‘Values motivate, morals and ethics constrain’. Underpinning this distinction is a characterisation of ‘values’ as our basic beliefs, as the essential drivers behind our deciding what is right or wrong, good or bad, important or unimportant. ‘Morals’ meanwhile imply judgement and the prescription of appropriate – or proscription of inappropriate – values, standards and behaviour. ‘Ethics’ represent the formalisation or systemisation of moral standards that, instead of being imposed externally, are defined in internal, organisational terms. Finally, ‘principles’ are deemed to be the fundamental or general truths that ‘inform our choice of values, morals and ethics’ (Chippendale 2001).
The British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP), in its Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP 2010: 2), summarises the relationship between values, principles and ethics as follows: ‘Values inform principles. They represent an important way of expressing a general ethical commitment that becomes more precisely defined and action-orientated when expressed as a principle.’ Thus, the moral force of a given set of ethics both depends upon and adds weight to principles that are themselves rooted in properly substantive values. It is with these themes in mind that I now turn to examine the issues arising from a consideration of my own values and those embraced and encouraged by the counselling profession.
‘Personal qualities to which counsellors and psychotherapists are strongly encouraged to aspire’, recommends the BACP, include empathy and sincerity, integrity and resilience, courage and humility (BACP 2010: 4). Such essential ‘moral’ qualities (to use the BACP’s own choice of adjective) certainly chime with my own. To that short list, I would add other commonly cherished, if similarly uncontentious, values, such as curiosity and passion, creativity and critical thinking, loyalty and dedication, honesty and dependability. Yet it is the, arguably, more contentious, multi-faceted concepts that give rise to important questions, not about the particular virtues they embody, but about the significance they hold for the relationship between psychotherapy and a therapeutic political culture.
Among these ideas, I would include equality and freedom, independence and empowerment, individuality and diversity, respect and tolerance. There is not space here to examine the specifics of all these values and principles, or their overall relevance to the counselling profession. Certainly, there is little doubt that they would all would be endorsed, accepting differences in interpretation, by the mainstream of the profession, but the two ideas I want to focus on here are among those most widely misunderstood: respect and tolerance.
The counsellor or psychotherapist (certainly in the client-centred, humanistic tradition of psychotherapy) is expected to demonstrate unconditional ‘respect’ for his or her client. This psychotherapeutic model of ‘respect’ derives, largely, from the ideas of Carl Rogers, one of the founding proponents of the humanistic approach to therapy, and for whom respect formed a key component of his concept of ‘unconditional positive regard’ (Sanders 2008: 58-64). Yet it is equally important to acknowledge that the idea of ‘respect’ can be understood very differently. In historical, cultural and broadly moral terms, to ‘respect’ someone is to hold him or her in high regard. Indeed, in certain contexts, respect implies deference (Harper n.d.). At the very least, outside its context-specific meaning in psychotherapy it is a truism that respect is something that has to be earned.
This is not a matter of semantics. Nor is it a criticism of the idea of ‘respect’ as applied in Rogerian psychotherapy, where unconditional positive regard is intimately and appropriately bound up with congruence and acceptance, empathy and openness, providing ‘an environment in which the individual can identify their own life goals and how they wish to determine them’ (Bennett 2003, Iberg 2001, Sanders 2008: 51-57 and 65-73). Nonetheless, the criteria by which politics should be judged are very different. Indeed it is the very question of judgement that is at stake here.
‘Non-judgmentalism’ is a key value in the therapeutic environment, central as it is to empathy, acceptance and congruence, and to ensuring counsellors and psychotherapists are unimpeded in ‘fostering a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned’ (BACP 2010: 2). Yet it is singularly ill-suited to politics, where aforementioned principles like equality and freedom, independence and empowerment depend on debate and critical evaluation (both of which are principles I strongly advocate). Indeed, as Furedi (2011a) observes, ‘the precondition of a working democratic public sphere is openness to conversation and debate.’ He continues: ‘Reflecting on our differences with other points of view, letting people know where we stand and what we find disagreeable in their opinions… that is the very stuff of a vibrant democracy’ (2011a). Nonetheless, the contemporary political imagination has become estranged from making value judgements, the corollary of which is a form of non-committal relativism that has allowed for the ‘therapeutic’ turn towards non-judgmentalism.
Furedi (2003, 2010, 2011a, 2011b) has explored in detail the rise of a therapeutic culture and the ways in which non-judgmentalism has moved from the therapy room and into public life. ‘In contemporary public debate’, he notes, ‘the important connection between tolerance and judgement is in danger of being lost. The word ‘tolerance’ is now used interchangeably with the term ‘non-judgmental’ (2011a). What is becoming increasingly apparent is that non-judgmentalism, in the political sphere, has usurped the classical liberal idea of tolerance.
‘Respect’, however, is perhaps not beyond being reclaimed as a genuinely liberal principle. [T]he traditional liberal idea of tolerance’, writes Furedi (2010), ‘upholds the notion of respect – not, however, the idea of unconditional affirmation, as respect is understood today, but the liberal notion of respecting people’s potential for exercising moral autonomy.’ And it is our ‘moral autonomy’ that is diminished by a therapeutic political culture. The ‘cultivation of vulnerability’ such a culture entails is reflected in ever-expanding categories of mental illness and the increasing psychologisation of everyday life. As Black (2010) argues, such trends are indicative of a crisis of meaning ‘born of the atomisation of the social world’.
How resilience in the face of this social atomisation might be forged is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that it is indeed resilience, in myself and others, that I hold in high esteem, as both a citizen and a counsellor. What I have sought to do here is defend therapy against (and distinguish it from) the ‘therapeutic turn’ in politics, and argue that ersatz therapeutic values in politics undermine the very autonomy counsellors seek to uphold for their clients. Included among the BACP’s appropriately robust ‘Ethical principles of counselling and psychotherapy, alongside ‘fidelity’ (trustworthiness), ‘self-respect’ (self-knowledge and self-care), ‘beneficence’ (promoting wellbeing), ‘non-maleficence’ (avoiding harm) and ‘justice’ (impartiality), is ‘autonomy’, which is neatly summarised as ‘respect for the client’s right to be self-governing’. It seems fitting, then, to end this essay by highlighting what, for me, is not merely a ‘personal value’, but rather the most important of all moral, ethical, professional and political principles (BACP 2010: 3-4).
References
BACP (2010) Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy. Lutterworth: BACP
Bennett, P. (2006) Abnormal and Clinical Psychology: An Introductory Textbook. Maidenhead: Open University Press
Black, T. (2010) ‘Why More and More People Feel ‘Mentally Ill’’. Spiked [online] 29 July. Available from < http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9356/> [25 March 2012]
Chippendale, P. (2001) On Values, Ethics, Morals & Principles [online]. Available from < http://www.minessence.net/articles/Articles.aspx> [25 March 2012]
Furedi, F. (2003) Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. Oxford: Routledge
Furedi, F. (2010) ‘The Truth About Tolerance’. Spiked [online] 29 December. Available from < http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/10034 > [25 March 2012]
Furedi, F. (2011a) ‘Don’t Blame Tolerance For This Multicultural Mess’. Spiked [online] 7 February. Available from < http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10163/> [25 March 2012]
Furedi, F. (2011b) On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence. London: Continuum
Harper, D. (n.d.) Online Etymology Dictionary [online]. Available from
