ABSTRACT
Introduction Throughout this book, we have identified examples of psychiatric moral agency in a variety of challenging circumstances. Whether it be British psychiatrists grappling with legislation targeting personality-disordered patients, American psychiatrists practicing under unrestrained market forces and internecine arguments over the state of psychiatric knowledge, or Argentine psychiatrists adapting to a rapidly changing social context, the psychiatrist’s moral behavior has been profoundly influenced by context. In this last chapter, we return to the issue of social justice and how psychiatrists can enact moral agency in the face of a seeming failure of the sovereign. The broader focus of this chapter is the dilemma over how Australian psychiatrists respond to the treatment of asylum seekers by their Commonwealth government. This is not a distinctly Australian problem, although in the context of Australian psychiatry it is an apposite example of the multiple contextual influences upon the moral agency of Australian psychiatrists. This example involves Australian psychiatrists-the colleagues of the authors of this book. While our consideration of the challenges faced by our fellow psychiatrists can be handled in an objective manner, our examination of an ongoing challenge to the ethical practice of psychiatry in Australia is by nature more a participant-observer process than our quasiethnographic considerations of other areas. In a sense, our consideration of the issues raised in this chapter and the conclusions we argue speak to the social constitution of our moral agency and our own personal dual-role dilemma.
