Aim: The aim of the study was to analyse solutions to ethical dilemmas based on the criterion of “paternalism-autonomism” in the context of psychotherapists’ professional experience and therapeutic modality. Another aim was to review the sources of choices of ethical decisions from the perspective of the “intuitiveness – ethical reflection” dichotomy, and to assess the percentage of ethical, ambiguous, and non-ethical justifications of solutions preferred in those ethical dilemmas. Method: It was a cross-sectional qualitative study. An original questionnaire describing three exemplary clinical and ethical dilemmas combined with a multiplechoice questionnaire containing recommended solutions to the presented dilemmas was employed in the study. The responses were correlated with the modality of psychotherapy (cognitive-behavioural, psychoanalytic-psychodynamic, psychodynamic-systemic, systemic, integrated) and the professional experience of therapists. The statistical analysis included questionnaires obtained from 191 respondents. Results: Statistical data indicate the general advantage of autonomous decisions in the entire group of therapists, regardless of their professional experience. A significant advantage of autonomic solutions over paternalistic solutions was demonstrated in all analysed therapeutic approaches with the exception of the cognitive-behavioural approach. Moreover, a statistically significant majority of psychotherapists reported the use of ethical reflection when choosing the solutions to the discussed dilemmas. A comparison of the total number of selected justifications revealed a significant advantage of ethical justifications over ambiguous and non-ethical ones, regardless of the professional experience of therapists and in all modalities except the psychoanalytic-psychodynamic and psychodynamic-systemic types. Conclusions: The principle of respect for autonomy plays an important role in the professional ethics of psychotherapists, and the preference for ethical considerations and justifications when choosing solutions to practical ethical dilemmas indicates a potential benefit of incorporating ethics into the professional training of therapists.
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The article contains a critical analysis of the Code of Ethics for Psychologists by the Polish Psychological Association, which is in place from year 1991 to 2018. The aim of the article is to point to inadequate, unclear, or leading to incoherent interpretations regulations found in this Code. The first part of the text describes functions and also benefits as well as dangers connected with ethical codes in general. The second part is an analysis looking for inaccuracies and incoherencies in the Code’s content. At the end, there are illustrated the main issues requiring an update or a thorough change in the future versions of the Code’s approach to capture the norms of psychologists’ profession.
The role of ethicists is to provide a genuine ethical theory to help non-ethicists interpret and solve moral dilemmas, to define what is right or wrong, and, finally, to clarify moral values. Therefore, ethicists are taught to address morality with rational procedures, to set aside their moral intuitions and emotions. Sometimes, professional ethicists are prone to falling into the archangel delusion – the belief that they are beyond the influence of their own emotions. This can lead to ousting moral intuitions from the space of ethical reflection, thus making ethicists unaware of them. They may treat intuitive beliefs about morality as an expression of primal moral feelings. The main question pursued in this article, is how those feelings may influence moral theories, which should be developed by professional ethicists. Ethicists may provide an ethical theory which is merely a rationalisation and justification for their own suppressed moral emotions, rather than the effect of genuine, rational moral reasoning. To help ethicists cope with this delusion, a model of cooperation between descriptive and normative ethics is proposed. Ethicists should therefore use the research tools of descriptive ethics to determine their own intuitions, and the moral emotions in which these intuitions are grounded. --------------- Received: 09/06/2021. Reviewed: 23/07/2021. Accepted: 13/08/2021.
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