Counselling and Ethical Theories

The multiplication of counseling interventions, therapeutic models, advisory practices, couching expertise or “think tanks” is a characteristic of the increasing social awareness to the need for control or to the observation of learning in psychological and social contexts. Such trends put under a special focus the contribution of Science and Technology to the best design of the self-observation of organizations. Appropriate answers to specific ethical issues resulting from conflict or stress in the interpenetration of psychic (actions, perceptions and beliefs) and communicative schemes (decision-making sequences, interactional patterns and communicative themes) are also today’s concerns. In my paper, I propose a redefinition of second-order Ethics (after Heinz von Foerster’s Second-Order Cybernetics). Second-order Ethics proves to be a valid answer to the needs for an ethical theory able to address the theme of responsibility in personal processes where learning to learn is crucial and also a good tool to face concrete situations requiring therapeutic intervention or counselling in learning organisations.