Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling. Kenneth S. Pope
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many years they had maintained a small and very successful group practice. Then they modernized, bringing in state-of-the-art computers, elegantly networked and equipped with wonderful software that made the therapists’ work so much easier.
Until one day the first therapist hit the send button. He had carefully collected all the electronic records of one of his patients, who was involved in litigation, to e-mail to the patient’s attorney. There were the billing records, results of psychological testing, records of therapy sessions, as well as the background records (employment, disability, etc.) that the therapist had on file. The therapist gave one last look and then hit the send button.
It was only after watching his computer send off the records that the therapist realized he had used the wrong address on the e-mail. The patient records were on their way, not to the patient’s attorney, but to a large internet discussion list that the therapist belonged to. This unfortunate series of events led to a formal complaint against the therapist.
By a far-fetched coincidence typical of hypothetical scenarios, the second therapist walked into the first therapist’s office just when the first therapist was hitting the send button. Here’s what the second therapist said: “Can you believe it!? I’m being sued, and it’s all because of my computer! When my patient temporarily moved to the east coast for a sabbatical, we thought it best to continue treatment, but because of the time difference and our heavy schedules, we couldn’t find a time when we could both talk, so we decided to communicate by e-mail. But then she got mad at me about something and filed complaints against me in the other state! So now they’re saying I was providing psychological services in that state without being licensed in that state, and that I failed to follow that states rules and regulations about…well you’d have to read the complaints her attorney has filed with the licensing board, the courts, and the ethics committee. It’s terrible!”
As if sensing that another wild coincidence was needed to keep the story moving, the third therapist rushed into the first therapist’s office at that moment and said: “You won’t believe what just happened! I just got a formal notice that I’m being sued! I just found out what happened: Somehow a virus or Trojan or Worm or one of those things got into my computer and took my files—you know, all my confidential case files—and sent them to everyone listed in my address book and to all the other addresses in my computer’s memory. What do I do now?”
On cue, the fourth therapist ran into the room and cried, “Help! I’m in such trouble! One of my patients is involved in a nasty law suit, and I received a court order to produce all my records. The patient had given me consent to turn them over because she and her attorney believe they will be the key to their winning the case. So, I sat down to print them out and … they’re gone! My hard drive crashed and when I hired a company to rescue what they could, they retrieved some of the files but all the files for that patient are gone. What do I do now?”
Although the room was getting crowded, the fifth therapist slouched in, collapsed in a chair, and said, “I’m doomed. I kept all my records on my laptop. But while I was at lunch today, someone broke into my car and stole it. Then I got worse news. I thought at least the files would be safe because I encrypted them, but I just found out from a colleague that since the program I used to encrypt and unencrypt them is on that computer and since many thieves have software that enables them to get past passwords and gain use of the encryption program, it would be pretty easy for a hacker to unencrypt my files.”
When the final member of their group practice failed to show up with bad news, they grew concerned and went down the hall to her office. She was sitting at her desk with a big smile on her face. She said, “I can’t tell you how good I feel. I’ve been so concerned about keeping records on my computer that I finally decided it just wasn’t worth the worry. I printed out all my records, made extra copies that I put in my safe deposit box, and got rid of my computer. It was such a good move for me. I haven’t felt this good in days.”
It was only months later that she discovered, when reading the complaint filed against her, that she had done a poor job of trying to erase her hard drive before selling her computer, and that the person who had bought it had little trouble retrieving the supposedly erased files and reading all the details about her patients.
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These scenarios remind us of the need for constant alertness, constant awareness of the ways that seemingly simple and abstract ethical principles in the ethics codes can find their way into our work, often in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. Anticipating potential problems like these begins with our understanding of the ethics codes themselves, the topic of the next chapter.
Chapter 3 ETHICS THEORIES AND CODES
The work we do as therapists is complex, difficult, and emotional. Yet, as a mental health profession we have often struggled to capture with words exactly what we do and even what we profess to do as therapists. The challenge of describing what we do has been debated from the start of our profession.
In 1949, the Boulder Conference tried to define psychotherapy in a way that it could be used to train clinical and counseling psychologists. Carl Rogers, then president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1947, appointed David Shakow to chair a committee on defining and teaching psychotherapy. The Shakow Report, adopted at the 1947 APA convention, resulted in the Boulder Conference two years later.
On August 28, 1949, the recorder for the Boulder Task Force for defining both psychotherapy and the criteria for adequate training provided the following summary: “We have left therapy as an undefined technique which is applied to unspecified problems with a nonpredictable outcome. For this technique we recommend rigorous training” (Lehner, 1952, p. 547).
Since the Boulder Conference, other conferences and various groups have tried to define psychotherapy and the practice of psychology. For example, the 2002 Competencies Conference: Future Directions in Education and Credentialing in Professional Psychology (Kaslow et al., 2004), identified competencies in professional psychology and discussed effective strategies for teaching and assessing these competencies (Kaslow, 2004; see also Belar, 2009; Fouad et al., 2009; Hatcher, 2015; Hatcher et al., 2013; Rodolfa et al., 2013). Similarly, the European Association of Clinical Psychology and Psychological Treatment (EACLIPT) Task Force on Competences of Clinical Psychologists (2019) developed “a list of competences that should be acquired during regular studies of psychology with a clinical specialisation” (EACLIPT Task Force, 2019; see also Prado-Abril et al., 2019).
THEORIES OF ETHICS
The difficulty reaching agreement on a definition of therapy is echoed in the difficulty agreeing on a basic theory of ethics. In this section we briefly review four theories of ethics to illustrate the vast diversity of ethics theories, which can be viewed as a strength. Put succinctly, having multiple lenses through which we can examine and question professional ethics codes and our own ethical decision-making is an advantage.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism, developed by Epicurus, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, and Peter Singer among others, holds that a guiding principle of ethics involves choosing whatever brings the most happiness and produces the least pain to the majority. According to Bentham (1780):
Nature has placed mankind [humankind] under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think …. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law …. By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever … according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish … happiness …. (p. 232–245).