Читать книгу Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling - Kenneth S. Pope - Страница 48

The CPA was organized in 1939, incorporated under Part II of the Canada Corporations Act in 1950, and received its Certificate of Continuance under Canada’s Not-for-profit Corporations Act in 2013. In the mid-twentieth century, Canada was a geographically large country with relatively few psychologists. Because it would have been hard to bring these psychologists together to create an ethics code, “the Canadian Psychological Association … decided to adopt the 1959 … APA code for a three-year trial. This was followed by adoptions (with minor wording changes) of the 1963 and 1977 APA revised codes” (Sinclair & Pettifor, 2001, p. i).

Discontent with the APA code and the perception that it was not a good fit for Canadian psychologists led the CPA to create its own code. Prior to developing its own code, there was evidence of periodic discontent by CPA members with the APA code. For example, in a 1976 document titled “Alternative Strategies for Revising CPA’s Code of Ethics,” the statement was made that the 10 APA ethical principles were “clearly designed for the current American social and moral climate and geared to American traditions and law.” However, it was not until the 1977 revision of the APA code that the discontent became serious.

Of particular concern was the fact that, in response to US court applications of antitrust law to professional activities, the APA had removed some of its restrictions on advertising. Many Canadian psychologists believed such application of antitrust laws ran the risk of changing the nature of the professional relationship from a primarily fiduciary contract to a commercial one (Sinclair et al., 1996, p. 7).

To create an ethics code, CPA began with a critical analysis of the international and interdisciplinary literature to determine the primary purposes of codes of ethics and their perceived strengths and weaknesses. This was followed by sending out 37 ethical dilemmas to psychologists who were asked how they would act in these situations and, equally important, to describe their reasoning (Sinclair et al., 1987). The responses yielded four basic ethical principles (CPA, 1986):

1 Respect for the Dignity of Persons

2 Responsible Caring

3 Integrity in Relationships

4 Responsibility to Society

The original CPA ethics code opened with a Preamble, which included a model of ethical decision-making in which the four ethical principles are to be considered and balanced. The Preamble was followed by four sections. Each section included an ethical principle, identified the values that give definition to the ethical principle, and list the standards that illustrate the application of the principle to the activities of psychologists.

Although the code was revised in 1991 and 2000, its original structure and emphases on the four ethical principles and ethical decision-making remains (Sinclair, 1998, 2011).

The third revision of the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists (CPA, 2017a) maintains the structure and emphases of previous editions of the Code, but with clarification, updates, and additions related primarily to the following themes:

1 The role of “the personal” (e.g., virtue, character, self-knowledge) in ethical decision-making

2 Additional examples on the application of the principles and values to the use of technologies

3 Additional attention to collaborative/interdisciplinary practice

4 More attention to the impact of diversity and globalization on both society and psychology