Ethics in Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Ethics plays a dual role in psychiatry. The extrinsic role is in defining the rules of ethical conduct for the psychiatrist as a professional dealing with patients, peers and society at large. The intrinsic role is in defining ethical or moral conflict as a determining component in the construction of symptoms of mental disorder. Ethical considerations play a role in the truthful description of the disorder, diagnosis, dynamic formulation and the doctor-patient relationship in treatment. In treatment, there is a need to acknowledge 2 dimensions of psychological conflict: (1) an appraisal of the actual realistic moral conflicts due to symptomatic unethical conduct that goes against one's normative conscience, and (2) resolution of past conflicts arising from unconscious or repressed aspects of the neurotic conscience or superego, i.e. a holdover of unreflected obedience to parental authority. The resolution of past and ongoing conflicts promotes growth toward autonomy of moral judgment, free choice and moral responsibility.

A Most Dangerous - and Revolutionary - Method: Sabina Spielrein, Carl Gustav Jung, Sigmund Freud, Otto Gross, and the Birth of Intersubjectivity

“…Could she possibly be referring here to rape as a form of care? She quotes the psychoanalyst Zvi Lothane (), who rather euphemistically concluded that Jung and Spielrein shared “a loving relationship of mutual respect, friendship, and sympathy, a message from one soul mate to another, a manifestation of psychological and spiritual connectedness” (p. 201).…”

Requiem or reveille: A response to Robert F. Bornstein (2001).

“…The person who enters analysis seeks the Socratic goal of the examined life, both of learning to know himself or herself as torn by conflicts over the two great problems in life, sexuality and aggression, and to grow as a moral agent who lives his or her life responsibly rather than impulsively. These moral concerns are not unique to psychoanalysis: they also inform the practice of psychiatry and medicine (Lothane, 1999b). They also inform great literature (Crews, 1970; Edel, 1982).…”