ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author considers how the socio-historical context for therapy sheds light on its various ethics, clarifies why and how those ethics are important, and provides a framework for understanding the differences, overlap, and conflicts among them. Taylor’s history is built around a few key themes: the sense of inwardness central to the modern experience of self, the affirmation of ordinary life, and the new value attributed to the voice of nature. Many of the psychotherapies depend upon the idea of a personal inner realm, whether this is conceived of as unnoticed cognitive assumptions or the depths of the unconscious. Linking therapeutic ethics to modern Western culture requires more than finding connections between therapy and the ideas of a few philosophers. Taylor examines the transformation of the early modern religious affirmation of ordinary life into its later, secular version. Twentieth-century modernism brought about further permutations in ideas about human flourishing.
