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The frustrations of virtue: the myth of moral neutrality in psychotherapy
Author(s) -
Hamilton Richard
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of evaluation in clinical practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.737
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1365-2753
pISSN - 1356-1294
DOI - 10.1111/jep.12044
Subject(s) - virtue , neutrality , psychotherapist , value (mathematics) , psychology , mythology , economic justice , character (mathematics) , epistemology , philosophy , law , political science , computer science , theology , machine learning , geometry , mathematics
This article questions a number of widely held views of the role of values in psychotherapy. It begins with a discussion of the now largely discredited view that psychotherapy can be value free. It also broadens this challenge to question the popular idea that values form an inescapable part of the therapeutic encounter. While this view is correct in outline, it is necessary to reject the underlying conception of values as largely arbitrary preferences that the client and the therapist bring to the encounter, as this fails to do justice to the inherently ethical nature of psychotherapy. It argues that we should recover the G reek notion of therapy as essentially concerned with the character of a person. In other words, the goal of therapy is virtue.