Читать книгу Positive Ethics for Mental Health Professionals - Sharon K. Anderson - Страница 34

We hope your exploration so far—these first stairs and first rooms of your mansion—has been an insightful experience. You know more about yourself now and that probably feels good, if somewhat daunting. Now, let’s take the next steps and explore your core in terms of personal traits, characteristics, or habits—in other words, your virtues. Philosophers, ethicists, and psychologists from at least the time of Aristotle have identified important virtues (Jordan & Meara, 1990; Meara et al., 1996; Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Vasquez, 1996), many of which are relevant and desirable for psychotherapists.

Peterson and Seligman (2004) have outlined six basic virtues along with associated character strengths, outlined in Table 1.1. For our purposes, we can consider all of them virtues. This is not an exhaustive list, and we invite you to think of others that might be important for you.

Table 1.1 Virtues and Character Strengths (From Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

Wisdom and knowledgeCreativityCuriosityOpen-mindednessLove of learningPerspectiveCourageBraveryPersistenceIntegrityVitalityHumanityLoveKindnessSocial intelligenceJusticeCitizenshipFairnessLeadershipTemperanceForgivenessHumilityPrudenceSelf-regulationTranscendenceAppreciation of beauty and excellenceGratitudeHopeHumorSpirituality

As you consider your (current and future) virtues and their relationship to your professional behavior, keep a few important points in mind. First, others can only infer our virtues from our behavior. We may not be good at expressing our virtues, or the right combination of virtues in the right amounts. Thus, we may think we are acting in accordance with our highest virtues, but others—colleagues, clients, state licensing boards—might perceive a failure of virtue. In these situations, our intent to display virtues is not as important as the behavior itself. For example, we may display courage in the wrong way by lying in court to secure our client’s custody of their children. “I was trying to be helpful” is not usually a good defense of unethical actions. When choosing actions, we need to consider the virtues that it looks like we’re expressing, not only the ones that we are intending to express.

Second, too much or too little of a virtue can be problematic. For example, too little compassion leads to indifference and too much compassion may lead to problems like taking too much responsibility for clients or enabling their self-defeating behaviors. Another example: Too little humility leads to arrogance and too much humility can lead to self-debasement and timidity.

Third, virtues do not exist in isolation; most behaviors reflect multiple virtues in combination. Consider the virtue of truthfulness. Sometimes we don’t tell a client the entire truth. For instance, we may not tell a client in couples therapy what their partner said about them in a private therapy session. Our virtue of truthfulness is tempered by virtues such as respectfulness (the partner shared impressions in private and expects their privacy to be respected) and prudence (sharing the information at this time in therapy may cause more harm than good). The ability to consider and express the right combinations and amounts of virtues is a virtue in itself—called practical wisdom.

We suggest that, along with practical wisdom, the virtues of courage (Angelou, cited in Ju, 2008), integrity, humility, and prudence are central. Courage is necessary for us to be in contact with our core, even in difficult situations, and to exercise our practical wisdom consistently. Integrity is the state of having our other virtues in proper proportions and balance. Humility is the awareness that we may not be fully competent, aware, and virtuous in every situation. Prudence refers to the habit of acting cautiously, with due regard to the potential consequences of our behavior. Some other virtues that psychotherapists might cultivate include compassion, respectfulness, and truthfulness.