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from Ethical Issues
"Whose Worldview?"
"Whose Psychology?"
How Psychotherapy Can
Recognize Diverse Value Systems
Is the profession of psychology a philosophically "neutral" undertaking that
deserves privileged status in defining the "good life" for clients? Or is this
stance of neutrality really a carefully cultivated public image?
Psychologist Stanton Jones says that in large part, psychology is in fact a
"moral enterprise." In creating a concept of what is healthy, there must
inevitably be an engagement not only of scientific, but also of philosophical
questions.
Lack of neutrality, however, is not the problem--in fact, no personality
theory or science of behavior can ever be "neutral," because they are in the
business of evaluating the meaning of behavior and providing solutions for
change. The problem, however, is in the widespread public misperception that they
can. And the mental-health profession has been less than forthright about that
reality when it represents itself to the public.
In "A Constructive Relationship for Religion with the Science and Profession
of Psychology: Perhaps the Boldest Model Yet," Stanton Jones, Ph.D., offers the
reader a useful and important discussion in the American Psychologist (March
1994, pp. 184-199).
Stanton Jones is the Wheaton College psychology professor who is currently
overseeing a study of sexual reorientation in cooperation with the Christian
ex-gay group, Exodus International.
The Psychologist as Secular Priest
Dr. Jones explains that psychotherapists are members of a "secular priesthood"
which holds to its own metaphysical and moral presuppositions. Psychology
conveys a worldview that teaches what is "good" (translated into clinical
sounding terms such as healthy, whole, adaptive, realistic, rational, mature,
etc.) and what is "bad" (translated clinically as abnormal, pathological,
immature, stunted, self-deceived, etc). Thus psychology is concerned with moral
and philosophical questions.
"There should be greater honesty in public relations by practitioners," he
says, "about the value-ladenness of the mental-health enterprise" (p. 196). The
present "cultivated public image" of psychotherapy as values-neutral, he says, is
a misrepresentation of reality.
Clients are inevitably affected by their therapist's worldview. Studies have
shown that psychotherapy tends to change a client's values, and therapists tend
to rate those clients as "more successful" whose values change to fall into line
with the therapist's personal worldview. Thus no client will be immune to the
therapist's ethical influence.
Even supposedly "neutral" disciplines such as behavior therapy, he notes,
contains "a prescriptive, ideological component: a favored mode of thinking, and
implicit criteria for making judgments" (p. 192). On the other hand, he explains,
"Without pre-orienting conceptions of some sort, we cannot perceive data at all;
the world would be a 'bloomin,' buzzin' confusion'" (p. 186).
"It is our biases that allow us to perceive and understand anything at all,"
he explains. But "the most limiting and dangerous biases are those that are
unexamined--and hence, exert their effect in an unreflective manner."
So the problem is not the values orientation; the problem is the lack of
frankness within the scientific community about the nature of those values.
Dr. Jones notes the ways philosophy influences the mental-health profession:
"Psychotherapy is, in American society, filling the void created by the waning
influence of religion in answering questions of ultimacy and providing moral
guidance. The APA's commitment to promoting human welfare presumes morally laden
visions of ultimate human well-being... [Its] involvement in social and
juridicial advocacy serves as one example of such a function...
"They have stepped in to fill the cultural niche vacated by the institutional
church, and have been in the business of answering questions of ultimacy with the
powerful mantle of modern science cast about their shoulders."
A complicating factor, Dr. Jones notes, is the disproportionately high number
of non-religious psychotherapists--many, in fact, with anti-religious
sentiments--in relation to the population.
Psychotherapists Must Reveal their Assumptions
How is this quandary to be dealt with? If psychotherapists are purveyors of a
moral code, how can they work with clients whose values are different than
theirs? Dr. Jones proposes that in clinical training programs, therapists be not
just sensitized to different ethical systems, but educated in depth about them.
They should become philosophically and theologically "literate," and in the
process, examine and clearly understand their own ethical assumptions.
And in their professional practices, they should be required to "make those
beliefs explicitly available for public inspection and discourse" (p. 193).
In reality, however, psychotherapists tend to obscure the values that shape
their work, or else unwitttingly lapse into them, and thus avoid public
accountability for the influence they exert on their clients.
He describes several systems of psychotherapy and their worldviews. The
founder of rational-emotive therapy, Albert Ellis, and also B.F. Skinner, founder
of behaviorism, have based their scientific psychotherapies on the belief of
naturalism. Naturalism, like theism, is a faith-based, unprovable
assumption--one that assumes that neither God nor the transcendent exist, and
that the material world is all there is.
Therefore, Dr. Jones notes, "If disbelief in the supernatural can suitably be
among the control beliefs of some scientists, it would seem that belief in God
and related beliefs about human persons could be allowable for others as a part
of their control beliefs" (p. 195).
Schools Assume the Scientific View is "Neutral"
In the current rancorous debate in the public schools about gay-affirming
programs, many schools are unwilling to inform students about the view that
change is possible--and that to some people, change is the only means to
wholeness and fulfillment. School administrators often defend this one-sided
presentation of the facts by claiming that because social science is a "neutral"
agent in the debate, it therefore constitutes the lone acceptable voice in the
schools on social issues. Thus the American Psychological Association, for
example, is able to influence students in public schools through its own ethical
system, while alternative positions are debunked or withheld from students' study
and consideration.
"Rather than committing ourselves to an impossible value neutrality, "we
should instead recognize that one cannot intervene in the fabric of human life
without getting deeply involved in moral and religious matters" (p. 197).
Therefore, he says, psychologists should press for greater explicitness to the
public about the value-laden nature of the practice of psychology, and the fact
that it is inevitably both a moral and a scientific enterprise. Individual
practitioners should know, and be ready to reveal, their own beliefs and ethical
assumptions.
Only when the mental-health associations freely reveal their biases and open
the discussion to other perspectives, will the public debate be fair and open on
important social questions such as homosexuality.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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