ABSTRACT
Psychotherapy and morality both guide people in how best to live with each other. Leaving aside the common clash between legitimate individual and communal interests, morality has a reputation among many therapists of setting up inappropriately oppressive standards. This chapter looks at an example of a few "shoulds" that deserve recognition in a psychotherapy-driven morality. The idea of telling people what they "should" do has a bad name in psychological circles. In psychological circles, resignation to guilt and shame has been replaced by the urgency of doing something about moral dilemmas, which has become as great as the need to recognize them. To incorporate moral relativity, so basic to the psychotherapy ethos, is a daunting objective because absolutist morality has a strong foothold in the public mind, which has long been dominated by a sharp definition of acceptable behavior.
