Personal Conscience Research Articles

Ethics Commentary: The Psychotherapeutic Relationship

Immanuel Kant once observed, “We are not gentleman volunteers; we are conscripts in the army ofmoral law” (Murdoch 1992, p. 35).We recognize that many individuals act primarily, perhaps exclusively, in self-interest. But Kant’s observation that there is a moral imperative—what he called a “categorical imperative”—is indeed compelling. We cannot ignore the fact that moral demands are placed upon us by virtue of our living in a social order with other human beings. Physicians and health professionals in particular live in a moral order, with obligations incumbent on them by virtue of the needs of those who seek their help. Acknowledging that there are scoundrels among professionals, those motivated solely by self-interest and not in the service of others, we recognize that there are certain demands that health professionals cannot escape. Specific moral obligations are imposed on them by virtue of their relationship with patients or clients. This relationship is shaped by the clinician’s promise and expertise to heal and by the imbalance that naturally exists between a person in need and a person who seeks to provide treatment, answers, and comfort in relation to that need. Whether one understands those obligations as allegiance to conscience, allegiance to God, allegiance to society, or a more direct allegiance to the patient or client, the obligations are present. PROFESSIONALISM IN THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP

Deberes jurídicos y convicciones morales en el ordenamiento español

Human rights literature has long been dealing with the issue of conscientious objection, which has recently been described, very adequately, as «a conflict between conscience and law». Based on this premise, this article brings this topic to a higher, more general level and refers to the moral convictions —of ethical or religious nature— that any individual may hold, and to the conduct that may follow such convictions in view of the legal duties imposed by the law on citizens. This is no doubt a universal problem: the consistence of human behavior as the product of personal ethics, and the related issue of how States are to respond when personal conscience and the existing legal order are incompatible. The author, as suggested in the title, deals with these matters in the context of Spanish Law, approaching conscientious objection as a multi-faceted issue. Special attention is paid to the actual/possible/ideal solution of a number of factual situations with a view to arriving at an outcome where no one is constrained to disregard his legal duties to the detriment of his freedom and personal rights. This work contemplates conscientious objection from a very up-to-date perspective, studying the relevant legal rules on the issue, which is presented as an ethical-legal conflict. In this type of situation, it is not legitimate to disregard the needs of any of the conflicting parties, as in a human rights framework all of them should be involved in fulfilling the twofold duty of abiding by the law and respecting one’s own conscience.

In Good Conscience: Expressions of Judicial Conscience in Federal Appellate Opinions

This article explores judicial references to what judges may or may not do, in their own words “in good conscience.” It assesses the most common situations in which federal appellate judges use this term and it discusses the propriety of different uses and placements of those expressions of conscientious commitments that play into judicial decisionmaking. It distinguishes between expressions of primarily institutional conscience (that is, the commitment to certain institutional values, responsibilities, or limitations on what the judge may do) and expressions of primarily personal conscience (that is, the commitment to the individual values or beliefs of the judge who expresses the matter of conscience). Having explored these categories of expressions, and the muddy middle ground between them, the article discusses questions of the legitimacy of conscience as an input to judicial decisionmaking and as a matter for open expression.

Papal Justice: Subjects and Courts in the Papal State, 1500-1750 (review)

Early Modern European Papal Justice: Subjects and Courts in the Papal State, 1500-1750. By Irene Fosi. Translated by Thomas V. Cohen. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2011. Pp. xiv, 272. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-813-21858-8.) In these last thirty years studies on the Papal State during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries have brought to light results with an intensity never experienced before. The institutions and social life that characterized the multiform realities of the Papal State have been the object of much research, especially after the publication of Paolo Prodi's The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls (Bologna, 1982; trans. New York, 1987), which opened the way to this fertile historiographical period. The existence of Italian regional states in a European context characterized by absolute and centralized monarchies has been strictly connected with the role of the papacy in maintaining balance among the Italian states. The main area of interests for scholars in these last three decades has been the relationships and conflicts among the institutions of the Papal State, an absolute nonhereditary monarchy in which the demands of a state in construction had somehow to go hand in hand with the supra-national nature of religion. Much attention has been given to the role of the institutions of justice and public order. The works of Irene Fosi on this topic have been substantial and based on an unrivaled range of sources. In La societa violenta (Rome, 1985), the author concentrated on the role of the nobility in the origins of banditry, also interpreted as a form of hostile action against the control of the territory by the state. In All'ombra dei Barberini. Fedelta e servizio nella Roma barocca (1997) she examined the separation of the role of the cardinalnephew- a position intrinsically linked to the personal nature of powerfrom that of secretary of state, a position in the framework of an impersonal administration. Moreover, the author has written various essays and edited collections on the papal judicial system. With this work, the author presents scholars with a general picture of justice at the time of the papacy, which now can be appreciated by American scholars. She also includes additional material on Niccolo Orsini, third count of Nola and Pitigliano (pp. 92-99); conclusions; and an extensive bibliography. The book presents for the first time an overview of the papal justice system in which the many conflicts are examined vis-a-vis their effects on the organization as well as on the control of the territory and personal conscience. …

Conflicts of Interest: can a physician serve two masters?

Conflicts of interest (COIs) exist when someone who has a fiduciary responsibility for another's welfare acts, or has the potential to act, in a manner inconsistent with their charge's best interests. COIs exist in all professions as well as in public service; however, in medicine, COIs pose a unique problem, given the responsibilities and special status that society grants to physicians. In this commentary, I explore conflicts of interest in various contexts: medical practice, continuing medical education, practice guidelines, medical journals, academic institutions and researchers, and medical professional societies and associations. I define the term “conflicts of interest” and review its ethical basis, offer common examples of COIs, discuss the importance of disclosure, and suggest ways beyond disclosure to minimize or limit COIs in the various settings in which physicians work. Ideally, physicians should try to avoid COIs, but when situations arise where physicians have COIs, how they manage them will depend on a combination of physicians' personal conscience and professional ethics, professional society ethics codes, and governmental regulation.

Crossing the water: spiritual growth in Bridge to Terabithia and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

The author analyses two award-winning juvenile novels, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary Schmidt. Each novel portrays a deep friendship between a boy and girl who cross a stream (or river) into a world that includes fantasy, play, closeness to nature and animals, and a sense of the sacred. Within a year, the girl dies, leaving the boy changed forever. The friendship, the journey, and the loss all contribute to the boy’s maturation. While both novels offer a compelling portrait of spiritual growth in children approaching puberty, Schmidt’s adds complexity by placing the friendship within a larger cultural context; he explores the interplay of religious tradition, racism, and economics. Spiritual maturation is portrayed as a gradual process that is rooted in personal experience, allowing room for doubts and questions. These novels can help readers to think more deeply about the following five themes: (1) the value of ‘soul friendship’ (what the Irish call anam cara, friend of the heart); (2) talking back to authority figures; (3) freedom and personal conscience; (4) growing from disappointment or loss; and (5) flexibility in relating to the Holy.

Increasing burden of institutional review in multicenter clinical trials of infertility: the Reproductive Medicine Network experience with the Pregnancy in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PPCOS) I and II studies

Many clinical investigators think that the burden of Institutional Review Board (IRB) requirements has been consistently increasing over recent years, although there are few objective data describing these trends. Over a period of 7 years, the Reproductive Medicine Network observed a significant increase in the size and requirements of IRB submissions and significant variability of IRB performance in reviewing multicenter trials. These additional regulatory and administrative demands represent substantial burdens to researchers and to the IRBs themselves. It is timely to consider whether these changes better protect the interests and safety of human research participants. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00068861 and NCT00719186.

Interrogations from the Margins

There are several common approaches to understanding religious conversion and correspondingly various ways of responding to it: as change, as subversion, as atrocity, as freedom. In our pluri-religious society, all of these must be contained in our Constitutional democratic secularism, affirmed both as the Nehruvian dharma nirapekshata, and the Gandhian sarvadharma samabhava, equal distance, and equal respect. These common approaches are often at odds and do not present an integrated or holistic understanding. While religious commitment is essentially a matter of personal conscience and freedom of choice, it inevitably impacts other areas and levels of individual and social life. In attempting a holistic approach here, we distinguish four levels of understanding: the psycho-social, the sociocultural, the eco-political, the socio-religious. Conversion as critique is invariably associated with resistance and rebellion, dissent and protest. It includes a spectrum of possibilities both in analysis and interpretation as well as in response and action.

Conscience & Conversion in Newman. A Developmental Study of Self in John Henry Newman (review)

Conscience & Conversion in Newman. A Developmental Study of Self in John Henry Newman. By Walter E. Conn. [Marquette Studies in Theology, No. 71.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2010. Pp. 158. $17.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-874-62777-0.) Walter Conn's concise, interdisciplinary case study of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman's psychological self-development and conversions mines not only English churchman's relevant major works but also his private letters, diaries, and journals, which, to paraphrase Newman, reveal true character of a man. Conn succeeds in his hope that some readers will find it a useful review of Newman's life (p. 9), since it offers a specialized perspective, with well-chosen source references, surveying well-traveled ground. Tracking Newman's various conversions chronologically, each of four chapters opens with a discussion of events and Newman literature of period, followed by Conn's use of psychological development theories from Erickson, Piaget, Kohlberg, Fowler, and Kegan to support his analyses of Newman's various conversions, although to those unfamiliar with this literature, brevity of psychological analysis can be challenging reading at times. However, a helpful chart on final page of appendix compares stages of each developmental theorist with four stages drawn from Conn's prior research. Readers may profit by reading very helpful appendix first, which provides a succinct overview of Conn's previous research on conversion. Conn's thesis for interpreting Newman's experiences is grounded in dynamic relationship of conscience, the radical drive of personal subject for self-transcendence (p. 132), and conversion, an 'about-face' which moves one into a world (p. 22). These occur within subject's fundamental dynamism for self-transcendence. Conn identifies Newman's multiconversions as they unfolded chronologically in three stages. First was a basic Christian moral conversion with evangelical overtones at age fifteen, accompanied by important affective, cognitive, and religious dimensions (p. 8).This led to a structural cognitive conversion (p. 8) during his twenties, with changes in both what and how religious knowledge was acquired. Finally, Conn suggests a new interpretation of Newman's ecclesial conversion as a negative deconversion from Anglicanism and a positive conversion to Rome at age forty-four, best understood as a moral (religious) decision responding to a judgment of personal conscience . …

Ethics in psychiatry: the lessons we learn from Nazi psychiatry

Under the Euthanasia Program of Nazi Germany, more than 200,000 psychiatric patients were killed by doctors in psychiatric institutions. After summarising the historical facts and the slow and still going-on process of illuminating and understanding what happened, some ethical consequences are drawn. What can we learn from history? The following aspects are addressed: the special situation of psychiatry in times of war, bioethics and biopolitics, the responsibility of the psychiatrist for the individual patient, the effects of hierarchy on personal conscience and responsibility, the unethical "curable-uncurable" distinction and the atrocious concept that persons differ in their value.

“A happy excursion” and freedom

In modern times, academics have used the perspective of political liberty and spiritual freedom to interpret and explain Zhuang Zi’s “happy excursion” as well as the substance of all his other thoughts. The starting point of the former is the political idea of laissez-faire; the latter involves the unique character of Zhuang Zi’s philosophy on life. But it misses the spiritual deficiency contained in Zhuang Zi, and so it is difficult to respond to criticism from modern liberals. This article argues that it is not quite accurate to use “happy excursion” to express modern freedom, but the spiritual tradition of “happy excursion” as a kind of native resource could still serve as a way to introduce the idea of liberalism at the level of a life philosophy based on independence, individual consciousness and the personal conscience and virtues embraced by the “happy excursion” thought of Zhuang Zi.

Trump Card: A Lawyer's Personal Conscience or The Professional Duty

Trump Card: A Lawyer's Personal Conscience or The Professional Duty

The Oath of Office as Public Value Guardian

The oath of office is perhaps the ultimate means to set public office apart: Public functionaries in most countries have to swear to let public interests prevail over private concerns. This seems at odds with the prevailing liberal/managerial idea that public and private employment is not distinct at all. The oath of office establishes a moral commitment to the office that transcends a contractual, managerial, and/or legal approach to public authority. It signifies the guardianship of public officers and links personal conscience with public values and public interests. This article concludes that we should guard against using an oath of office as a remedy against increased reliance on private interests and motivations; rather the latter may endanger a public service ethics and annul any meaning and function an oath may still represent to begin with.

The Positive Empirical Relationship of Professionalism to Effectiveness in the Practice of Law

This paper examines the relationship between professionalism and effectiveness through a review of empirical literature from the social sciences and the professions. In both peer-reviewed and industry studies, increased capacities for professionalism (e.g. personal conscience defined as perceptual clarity and empathy, moral judgment, moral identity, and moral implementation skills) were related to a wide range of effectiveness outcomes as assessed by clients and experienced professionals. These effectiveness outcomes include (1) increased satisfaction with the professional’s services, (2) decreased likelihood the professional experiences malpractice claims or complaints, and (3) increased likelihood the professional will detect or report wrongdoing. Evidence indicates that professionalism is not a fixed trait, but rather it can be enhanced and developed across the career span.

A Colloquium on the Congress “A Gift for Life. Considerations on Organ Donation”

Alessandro Nanni Costa, J. M. Simon i Castellvi, Antonio G. Spagnolo, Nunziata Comoretto, Jean Laffitte, Hakan Gabel, Francis L. Delmonico, Ferdinand Muehlbacher, Walter Schaupp, Alexandra K. Glazier, Valter D. Garcia, Mario Abbud-Filho, Jose O. Medina-Pestana, Mariangela Gritta Grainer, Pier Paolo Donadio, Anna Guermani, Riccardo Bosco, Francesco Giordano, Blanca Martinez Lopez de Arroyabe, Marco Brunetti, Marti Manyalich, Gloria Paez, Ricardo Valero, Rafael Matesanz, Elisabeth Coll, Beatriz Dominguez-Gil, Beatriz Mahillo, Eduardo Martin Escobar, Gregorio Garrido, and Felix Cantarovich

The Personal Is Not Political: The Progressive Conservative Response to Social Issues

The American religious right is often taken as the paradigmatic illustration of how conservatives responded to contestation over social issues such as same-sex rights and abortion. This article establishes that the response of Canadian conservatives – as expressed by the Progressive Conservative party – was quite different. The Progressive Conservatives held to a norm, grounded in their party's version of conservative ideology, that rendered partisan mobilization on social issues illegitimate. Rather, the party treated such topics as moral issues on which decisions, if they had to be made at all, ought to be made on grounds of personal conscience. The norm helped limit social conservative mobilization in Canada until the early 1990s, when the Reform Party replaced the Progressive Conservatives as Canada's major right-wing party.

Conscience and the law in Thomas More

No figure in the early modern period is more identified with an ideal of personal conscience than Thomas More. However, the figure of More in modern imagination is almost completely at variance with the view of historians. Indeed, according to this consensus, far from being radically modern, More's understanding of conscience is carefully orthodox and conservative, in line with the scholastic concept of synderesis as developed by Bonaventure and Aquinas. This essay re‐examines the scholastic inheritance while also placing More's thought in the context of the legal framework of conscience, especially its place in the court of chancery, where More worked on a daily basis. By considering new pressures on the idea of conscience both within late medieval and Reformation theology, and within the new legal theories of More's contemporary St German, the essay suggests that More's thinking is more ambiguous and yet also more potentially radical than is supposed in revisionist commentary. Nowhere is the complexity of More's thinking more evident than in the last letters of his life, written in prison, where he uses the word with extraordinary frequency and depth of understanding.

Conscientious objection and professionalism

This editorial outlines the principle of protection of health service providers' personal conscience, and the limit necessary to protect the health and freedom of their patients' rights of access to lawful health services. The balance protecting both providers' rights of conscience and patients' rights of care is the providers' duty to refer their patients to other providers who are suitable, available and prepared to offer the services to which the initial providers object. Referral is an ethical and often a legal duty that does not constitute complicity in the services the providers to whom reference is made may undertake. A burden of professionalism is that some professionals may object to lawful services that professional peers are willing to deliver. Further, objection is protected to lawful participation in procedures, but there is no right to object to administration of providers who undertake procedures administrators would object to provide to their own patients. Institutions and professional associations may assist clinical providers by keeping lists of other providers prepared to deliver services to which clinical providers object.

Simone Weil: Resistance and Writing

AbstractSimone Weil lived and wrote as a philosopher, theologian and political theorist, without keeping boundaries between these fields. She remains important, given her reflections on work, violence and non-violence, and the significance of each person’s orientation towards transcendent good. She raised important issues about critical and constructive appreciation of both ancient and current religious tradition, and about sensitive personal conscience and responsibility, especially in both political and ecclesiastical institutions. She refused the restriction of religious conviction to the margins of social and political life. Her work was incomplete, but remains a remarkable source of stimulus for work in a range of disciplines.

Individual and Institutional Liability of Researchers in the Case of Scientific Fraud

How have university institutions generally tackled fight against scientific fraud? We intend to throw light on very process of disclosure of scientific fraud, as it has transformed in last 30 years within framework of scientific research institutions. By focusing our analysis on denunciation process, we intend to refer to dual issue of researcher’s liability on one hand and institutional liability of structures on other. Passing from stage, which involves criteria such as truth of research, to an institutional stage, which involves common ethical references, analysis will highlight that issue of research integrity (the accuracy of an assumption made by researcher and its actual object) has been replaced by an ethical value more widely shared by international scientific community. Chapter 3 below will demonstrate that this ethical value can be defined either as confidence in science as a whole or the duty of objectivity relative to freedom of research. The disclosure of scientific fraud is not only a private on which an individual drama is unfolding, involving researcher’s personal conscience or that of their closer associates; it is a public stage where inter-subjective references clash with collective values. This switch from private issue to institutional context has yet to be clarified in knowledge society; while we know exactly what standards in terms of ethics and deontology are being breached by researchers when they do not comply with truth criteria, collective institutional values involved in case of scientific fraud have still to be examined...