Ethics and the bureaucratization of the psychotherapy professions

Abstract

The paper investigates the role of ethics and codes of conduct within psychotherapy organizations. It is argued that managerialist bureaucracies have usurped codes of ethics and put them in the service of compliance and control. The paper begins with a critical delineation of the three ways that philosophers have approached ethics: deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics. It asks the question: is psychotherapy a scientific activity? The answers to this question gives rise to different sorts of ethical requirements. The paper then moves onto the ways that power relations within and between institutions inform thinking about ethics. It is argued that psychotherapy organizations are becoming increasingly managerialist in their structure and ways of working, a consequence of which is that communication is controlled and constrained, and that this in itself is unethical.