Psychotherapy Ethics

Good psychotherapy requires ethical competence on the part of psychotherapists. But why is this so, and in which areas is it particularly important? Although psychotherapy bases its methods on scientific foundations, it is also an interpersonal activity, a work with frequently particularly vulnerable people. This makes it necessary for psychotherapy to follow certain ethical principles and for psychotherapists to continuously check whether their actions are morally appropriate. In this course, you will learn the basics of ethically guided psychotherapy, both theoretically and practically, using concrete case examples.

In the first chapter, we first ask why we need something like psychotherapy ethics at all and what this has to do with the question of what actually constitutes good psychotherapy. Subsequently, the second chapter will convey ethical foundations and you will learn how ethics differs from morality, what constitutes a sound argument, and which ethical theories exist.

The third chapter deals with a common area of application of ethics in psychotherapy, namely moral conflict, and how ethics can help us deal with such conflicts. In the following chapters, we will deal with some central moral conflicts: Chapter four deals with informed consent and the considerations regarding the capacity of patients to make judgments. In the fifth chapter, privacy, confidentiality, and duty of secrecy are in the foreground as ethical aspects of psychotherapy. In chapter six, we finally problematize conflicts of interest, multiple relationships, and boundary violations.

Chapter seven deals with placebo: In which tradition does this stand and what ethical implications does its use have? In addition, we ask to what extent psychotherapy differs from a placebo.

The last and eighth chapter deals with a particularly difficult area of application of ethics in psychotherapy, namely the spectrum between voluntary and compulsory treatment.

We wish you much enjoyment with the course!

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