Psychotherapy & Morality: A Study of Two Concepts.

Abstract

Two Concepts. By Joseph mARGOLIS, PhD. Price, $1.95. Pp 174. Random House, iNC., 457 Madison Ave, New York 10022, 1966. This book renders a special kind of SERVice to the psychotherapeutic enterprise. One of its chief virtues lies in the clarity with which it reveals how psychotherapeutic models are embedded in the SUBSTRUCture of society and culture. The author, an analytical philosopher, makes his contribution through a logical analysis of the language and practice of professional psychotherapists (primarily the dynamic school broadly conceived), some of whom he knew while he was a senior research associate in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati. His focal interest is to bring the practice and theory of psychotherapy into the arena of the philosophical framework of evaluation. His twofold sensitivity to the psychotherapists' resistance to philosophic intrusion and to the theoreticians' pervasive blindness to the value of philosophical principles spur him to note that, when professionals reflect upon their activity, they tend toward philosophical generalization themselves (and thereby become amateurs, as Waelder1 has so succinctly pointed out). The philosopher offers the function of a Socratic midwife: to clarify the latent philo¬ sophical assumptions and values within which the professional psychother¬ apist works by virtue of his relationship to the larger society and culture in which he functions. His basic assumption is that the practice of psychotherapy is a form of conduct and is, therefore, in the purview of the moral. His analysis reveals a double code of moral¬ ity, that of the profession and that of socie¬ ty. The boundaries of the are the right (justice and duty) and the good (hap¬ piness and well-being). There is no conflict between the good and the aim of therapy, but there is conflict between the profession's and society's morality at the point of justice and duty. To the question, How it is possible to resolve conflicts between therapeutic and values? the author responds with the thesis that moral obligations define the highest values of society; therefore, thera¬ peutic values are always subordinate to our obligations. While these distinctions