|
The Ethics of Caring Honoring the Web of Life in Our Professional Healing Relationships By Kylea Taylor ISBN: 0964315815 Excerpts from The Ethics of Caring
Chapter 1 - An Ethic of Relationship
"An ethic of care involves a morality grounded in relationship and response"Ethics has to do with the most interesting parts of human life: sex, relationship, self-understanding, love, and mysticism. Ethics, like sex (which it often seems to concern), is arousing, engaging, and humorous. The consideration of ethics has the potential to expand self-knowledge and self-concept, and to improve relationships. Ethics concerns relationship. It is about the inner relationships of our values to actions. It is interaction between one belief and another, one desire and another, one fear and another. Ethics is the process by which we sort out what best creates inner and outer harmony in our lives. Honoring the web of life Ethical behavior stems from the internal congruency and harmony between our values and our actions. Ethical behavior also develops from the therapist's sense of external connection. Using nonordinary states of consciousness, the therapist works with not only all parts of a client, but all parts of the network to which the client is connected (or from which she has become disconnected). She works with those parts physically, emotionally, cognitively, socially, and existentially or spiritually. Emotional, physical, and spiritual healing takes into account the sociopolitical system (and perhaps even the cosmological system) in which the therapeutic relationship itself exists. We speak more ethically and act more ethically when we begin to see and honor the web-like context of relationship that weaves between the many facets of both therapist and client. We naturally make more ethical decisions when we honor the intricate connections extending beyond the walls of the therapy session into family, culture, ecosystem, and even into unseen dimensions….What I do affects you. What you do affects me. What I do to you will ultimately affect me.
Chapter 2 - Profound and Intense Client Experiences Nonordinary states in ordinary therapy Any good therapy involves a nonordinary state of consciousness at some time and to some degree. Therapy is about change, and profound change involves a radical shift in self-view, world-view, or spiritual understanding. Nonordinary states allow ingrained habits of thought, feeling, perception, and understanding to recede, diffuse, and break down as necessary so that people can find new understanding and reclaim disconnected parts of themselves….Many of the concepts in this book apply also to these therapeutic moments of profound change in ordinary therapy, even though these moments are not identified commonly as nonordinary states.
Chapter 4 - A Model for Examining Our Vulnerabilities I believe that almost everyone who works with clients in or out of nonordinary states wants to do a good job. We care about our clients. We want them to achieve healing and insight and to have a positive outcome to their experience in nonordinary states. We begin a therapeutic relationship wanting to be in right relationship. Usually, we welcome help in staying in right relationship to our clients. This model of Caregiver Vulnerabilities to Ethical Misconduct (diagram) provides a general map of the somatic/psychospiritual journey and points out potholes and distractions that might show up along the road. It may help in conceptualizing this model to think of the straight line of right relationship as a rubber band stretched vertically. The fears, desires, and spiritual longings pertaining to each center* (listed in diagram) wait along the sidelines. Each center has its own special vulnerabilities to attachment through desire or longing and through fear. A situation involving ethics usually involves more than one center's issues. The rubber band can be pulled to one side or the other. The resulting zigzag course makes the flow of energy and clear communication more difficult. Identifying the issue, on the other hand, often allows us some objectivity and detachment. Knowing where we are off track helps us reorient and straighten the path toward the right relationship we wanted at the beginning of the caregiving relationship. If a therapist should find himself shoulder deep in one of these potholes, he can stick out his head and take a look at the seven center model. Hopefully, this will help him pinpoint which fear, desire, or spiritual longing has attracted him, causing him to steer off course. Subsequently, each of the centers has its own chapter. Each chapter includes suggestions to help the therapist begin the search for appropriate use of the energies of that center. Each caregiver's situation is unique so each of the chapters has questions to facilitate self-reflection. This model expands the possibilities for ethical consciousness by naming the issues of each center. These issues apply not only to ordinary states and traditional therapy, but also to nonordinary states and transpersonal therapy, bodywork, and spiritual counsel. They apply particularly to those profound moments in any truly healing therapeutic relationship. In an ethical helping relationship, the therapist allows the client's energy to work out its own issues in various arenas. The therapist supports the client but is careful not to let his own fears, desires, or spiritual longings distort the client's process. *Note: The seven centers are discussed in separate chapters. I have provided an example which follows in the sample chapter on sex.
Chapter 6 - Sex Sex-The second center Sexual energy is spiritual energy. When spiritual energy begins working in the psychophysical center called sex (the second center), it takes the form of sensual feelings, sexual sensations, evocative thoughts, deep emotions, and bodily expression. Spirit is moving in the body and the body has sensations. When this energy moves from another center into the second center, the human/spiritual energy does not change its essential nature, but its form does change. Countertransference-Spiritual longings and fears related to sex Therapists may long for their own experience of spiritual sexuality. Clients whose energy is in the second center may express their life energy in what appears to be a sexual (physical) way, but the spiritual part of it is foremost. They radiate life force and the mystery of that life force. A therapist watching such a process in a client may long to feel it in herself also. She may be tempted to try to acquire it by having sex with the client who is in touch with this energy. Countertransference-Personal desires and fears related to sex When the energy begins moving in this second center, clients often become very sexual. They become spontaneously seductive, but not in the usual game-playing way. Therapists may feel irresistibly attracted because of their own spiritual longings, as I have written above, or because of physical desires. When the client is being openly provocative or simply sexually magnetic, the therapist is often attracted and responsive. Sex is certainly the most prominent area of ethical violation. Most legal and ethical actions brought against therapists are for infractions of laws and codes which prohibit sex between client and therapist. (See Chapter 14.) A therapist may also encounter counter-transference in the sex center from her own fear. She may see the client's sexuality spontaneously and powerfully unfolding and respond with a kind of psychic tightening of the therapeutic reins. The therapist may fear the emergence of such uncontrolled, spontaneous sexual feeling in her own life. Sexuality is often linked to anger and hostility. Stanislav Grof (Beyond the Brain) discusses this connection in his description of the third stage of birth when the fetus experiences both aggression and sexual arousal. If a client's process involves this combination it may be particularly difficult for the therapist who has been harmed by abusive sexuality to remain objective. Touch is an area which impacts both transference and countertransference. Opponents of therapist touch point out that therapists do not always know their own deepest motivations in responding to or initiating touch with a client. In touching the client unconsciously, they may be unwittingly taking the first step down the road to unethical behavior. (See also Chapter 3). On the other hand, the therapist himself may fear physical touch. If he does, he may not be willing to touch the client when the client really needs a therapeutic, corrective touch. Conversely, if therapists have incorporated new age values of hugging and touching, they may feel as if they should always hug and touch a client, at least in response to a client's overture. They may neglect to follow their own intuition when it tells them hugging is not appropriate with certain clients or in certain situations. Transference related to sex The client in a second center process may feel devotional. As I mentioned above, her spiritual longing is expressed as a longing for bodily union. She may idealize her therapist as the divine lover. More accurately, she realistically sees the divine nature of certain people but tends not to see their human nature. There may be archetypal imagery involved in her fantasies. This powerful transference can cause havoc in a therapeutic relationship. It is difficult enough sometimes for a therapist to accept the transference role of mother, father, or other biographical character in the client's life. It can be quite a strain to a therapist's equanimity to accept and work with the transference of a client's own divine nature or of the image of god or goddess especially when the client's fantasy involves sexual devotion. Using the energy of sex appropriately If the therapist acts on his own attraction or the client's in an external way, it can divert the client's focus from the internal movement of the client's energy. The process, which is really an internal psychospiritual process, is subverted when the therapist encourages sexual contact to fulfill his personal needs. The reasons for not having sex with a client are not essentially different in this case from those in any ordinary therapy. Clients who trust a healer or a spiritual teacher feel injured when that person puts his own needs ahead of his client's best interests. Transference and touching Touching can be appropriate and necessary in a therapeutic relationship, especially as we have seen when the client is in regressed and other nonordinary states of consciousness. Appropriate use of the energy of this center may mean taking the risk to offer decisive, loving touch. A congregation member has an ecstatic experience during a church service, stands up, then falls backwards with body moving wildly. She needs the touch of the minister and other members to feel safely contained, to feel that her experience is accepted by others, and to rest quietly for a period afterwards. Therapists can investigate their own longings, desires, and fears around the physical body, physical sex, spiritual sex, touch and vital energy. Because the second center contains pitfalls which are terribly dangerous therapeutically and professionally, therapists can seek out training and consultation as prevention. They can certainly seek assistance at the first sign that their longings, desires, or fears are triggered by a client's transformative process in this center. Therapists can also examine their own current relationship to the transformative process of their own spiritual paths. Self reflection on sex (Excerpts from the listed questions)
Cross-referencing sex issues with issues in the other centers Ethical misconduct often involves sex. In many ethically troubling cases where there has been no actual sexual behavior, there have been romantic undertones and confusing double messages. Sex is the way we are accustomed to achieve union. We are attracted to that which we are lacking in ourselves in order to feel complete. Therefore sex is often used as a way to unconsciously become one with what we want: money, power, love, truth, and insight. We might attempt to fill this need for wholeness through union with a client who displays one of these qualities. (See Chapters 1, and 3 through 10.) If someone is dealing with sex as the primary ethical issue, he might refer to the section on telling the truth to ourselves in Chapter 13. He might also want to read over the sections on underestimation of the power of nonordinary states of consciousness to affect us and unacknowledged longings for love and spiritual connection in Chapter 12.
Chapter 13 - The Keys to Professional Ethical Behavior The keys to professional ethical behavior are qualities and strategies which help us intervene with ourselves, even when we are vulnerable to unethical behavior. When we are feeling slightly off track with a client, these keys can offer us a checklist to see which key we might have neglected in a particular case. They are: authentic caring, willingness to examine our own motivations, willingness to tell the truth, and willingness to ask for help (consultation) and to learn. Telling the truth to ourselves At some point in examining our own motivations, we become willing to tell the truth to ourselves. We can start with that willingness. We often begin by knowing that there is conflict inside and that while one part of us is willing to know, the other part is not. Willingness to tell the truth to ourselves often means being ready to lay down the defense mechanisms which protect us from knowing what we are up to. A look at the specific defense mechanisms and coping styles listed in the DSM-IV might provide information about which patterns we are using. Usually the DSM-IV is used to diagnose clients, but in this case, it comes in handy for diagnosing ourselves. In order to defend ourselves from the truth, we therapists use defense mechanisms, too! Once we know that we are bolstering our denial about something, we are hot on the trail of identifying what that something is. Some of the common mechanisms we use in defending against issues with clients in non-ordinary states are denial, projection, projective identification, rationalization, anticipation, dissociation, repression, humor, intellectualization, omnipotence, and devaluation. I will discuss each of these with examples of how they might be employed unconsciously.
Chapter 14 - Expanding Ethical Consciousness in Community Truth-telling and organizational integrity The practice of truth-telling is one of the keys to professional ethical behavior. One way an organization can support truth-telling is to avoid using criticism or punishment to enforce the taboo preventing openness about ethical misconduct. If the community believes that increasing self-awareness prevents ethical misconduct, it must support open self-reflection. If an organization wants members to talk openly about their vulnerability to present or future unethical actions, the organization has to establish a climate in which it is safe to do so. when they tell the truth, but also that they will be honored for saying what is so.
The Ethics of Caring: Honoring the Web of Life in Our Professional Healing Relationships. Copyright (c) 1995 by Kylea Taylor. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Hanford Mead Publishers, Inc., PO Box 8051, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-8051. (831) 459-6855. Email: HanMead@HanfordMead.com.
Second Edition
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint in The Ethics of Caring by Kylea Taylor some excerpts from the following works:
|
|
©2000 Hanford Mead Publishers, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Site Designed by Jason Yergeau. |
 |