ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a review of the general discussion on informed consent in medical ethics and explores its specific application to psychoanalysis. It discusses the impossibility of giving informed consent to traumatic events. The chapter reviews the self-psychological and intersubjective literature that explores trauma from the perspective of the “psychology of being human”. It describes how the lack of informed consent to a traumatic event can violate one’s sense of responsibility. Informed consent is an ethical concept commonly used in medical practice and research, and refers to a person, voluntarily and with foreknowledge, authorizing another’s intrusive actions on their persons. Informed consent is not only an ethical issue in medical practice and research, but also an experiential issue in human life. Informed consent is organized around the reflection of human dignity, irreplaceability, and taking responsibility. Every day and at every moment, human beings are subject to reality without consent in events both trivial and critical.
