A Foreword of Thoughts

Abstract

With the help of colleagues, I became interested in welcoming a group of authors to write on the topic of “process ethics.” This view of ethics transcends traditional ideas about ethics and the politics of modernistic empiricism of our field today. Process ethics explores instead the social construction of ethics that is local to the therapeutic process and relationship between the client and therapist. This relationship focuses on what is “good and proper” or ethical, based on the voice of the client as consumer, and the therapist as partner and participator. Ethics, considered from this position, centers on therapeutic endeavors that directly represent clients’ voices and desires for change. Within process ethics, clients are viewed foremost as the experts in what they view as problem and change. The client, as consumer, defines with the therapist what characterizes ethical standards and clinical proficiency. Process ethics serves to supplement traditional content ethics. Content ethics represents standardizations to protect the integrity and dignity of clients. Process ethics looks to communally agreed upon values and actions that the therapist and client mutually create. The opportunity to pull together a special section on process ethics continues my informal and formal inquiry into what generates ethical actions to occur in therapy, and what mental health providers can do to facilitate and sustain them. The following presentations, three brief commentaries and two extensive articles, reflect these ideas. When first reading the manuscripts that address the subject of process ethics, I was struck by the metaphor of a pebble skipping upon calm water. It was