ABSTRACT
The definitive appreciation of the meaning of psychoanalysis for ethics has yet to be written; academic reflections on what the law should or should not be extended to allow people to do; rather, concerned with the implications of psychoanalysis for personal responsibility in the everyday act of decision making. In this light it is clear that Sigmund Freud's system of metapsychology is in fact a very accurate description of one particular type of mind, one that has a strong inclination towards one particular defence strategy, namely reduction to part-objects. Psychoanalysis thus makes ethical demands upon the practitioner of an entirely novel and unique sort that cannot be compared with the ethical demands of other helping disciplines. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, is in possession of knowledge of the unconscious and of methods for making it conscious, and therefore has no excuse for failing to meet its own ethical standards.
