ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the assumptions about ethics that have prevented psychoanalysts from fully appreciating the importance of ethical experience in clinical practice. According to traditional conceptions, ethics focuses excessively on behavior, consciousness, the needs of others (rather than oneself), freedom, objectively formulated principles, predefined moral “content,” and a unitary conception of selfhood. Understood in this way, ethics has a highly limited, narrow utility in psychoanalytic practice. However, by applying the construct of dialectics that has been compellingly proposed elsewhere in psychoanalysis, we arrive at a vision of ethics that is compatible with psychoanalytic thinking while remaining true to our natural ethical intuitions. Utilizing literature from both psychoanalysis as well as moral philosophy, the author attempts to develop “a dialectical vision of psychoanalytic ethics,” in which we simultaneously affirm our commitment to patients’ well-being—their happiness and flourishing—and dignity—their rights, autonomy, and intrinsic worth as human beings. A clinical example is offered, emphasizing our moral obligation to develop ourselves along ethical lines, in order to progressively express the dignity and well-being of our patients as well as ourselves through our approaches to the therapeutic process.
