Introduction

Psychotherapy is typically understood to be a method to bring about specific changes in the symptomatology of mental disorders. This picture of therapy is accurate but incomplete. Psychotherapy is also a social practice that enacts some view of what it is to live well; it promotes an ethic. The rational self-mastery of cognitive-behavioral therapy, the search for authenticity of humanistic therapy, and the honest acknowledgment and working through of previously repressed wishes and motives in psychodynamic therapy have all been offered as key components of human flourishing. The philosophical anthropology of Charles Taylor is introduced as the guiding framework for an exploration of the ethical visions of psychotherapy.