Ethically Challenged Professions

Ethically Challenged Professions: Enabling Innovation and Diversity in Psychotherapy and Counselling, edited by Yvonne Bates and Richard House, Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books, 2003.

Commentary

An extract from the Foreword in which John Heron writes:

"An ethically questionable degree of control characterises the current dominant world order: the control of commodities and services by large corporations; the control of valid knowledge by academic establishments; the legitimization of professional practice by statutory regulation; and so on. Such control is out of tune with the emerging values of what seems to be a new kind of civilisation, one that is essentially peer to peer. Peer-to-peer developments are afoot, notably on the internet; but also in manufacturing, in politics and social change, in psychological growth, in spiritual unfoldment, and in research and knowledge generation.

In all of these emerging fields, the interdependent values of personal autonomy and social co-operation are paramount; and hierarchy - thinking on behalf of, and proposing social structures and standards for, other people - is validated solely by its ability to enhance these prior values. A key distinction here is between hierarchy that controls autonomy and co-operation in a restrictive way, and hierarchy that provides forms for their liberation and continuous development.

This forthright book is poised very precisely on the leading edge of that distinction, exploring issues where controlling hierarchy and empowering hierarchy confront each other in the field of psychotherapy and counselling. This field provides a crucial test-bed for clarifying and enacting ethically appropriate ways of exercising empowering hierarchy."

More Information

See the entry on P2P Psychotherapy