Description
Book SynopsisIn First Principles, Alessandra Lemma examines the centrality of applied ethics to psychoanalytic practice, The book focuses on the articulation of an accessible framework for developing and exercising an identifiable method - an ethical self-discipline - to support critical reflection on therapists'' psychoanalytic work with patients and to help them to approach the resolution of ethical dilemmas. Integrating key concepts from the field of applied ethics, and bioethics specifically, Lemma re-interprets them for use within a psychoanalytic framework, articulating how we can understand psychoanalytically the concepts of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, and veracity and deploy these to guide clinical work. Using clinical examples, the book outlines a working model for how therapists can reflect on their practice, as well as devoting a chapter on how to teach ethics within psychoanalytic psychotherapy trainings and outlining a detailed curriculum for teaching ethics. This book is essential reading for psychoanalytic practitioners as well as clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and psychoanalysts who work in the psychoanalytic tradition.
Trade ReviewLemma's deeply reasoned and erudite advocacy for ethical self-discipline on the part of psychoanalysts eschews both stodgy moralizing and formulaic guidelines. Instead, she recommends the cultivation and sustenance of psychic space for truth, fairness, and respect for the patient's essential Otherness. Lemma's approach is characterized by a gentle iconoclasm that challenges us to leave the comfort of normative narratives, societal or psychoanalytic, while listening to our patients. Her oeuvre is wide-ranging, writing style elegant, and arguments convincing. The result is a book of rare literary luminosity, theoretical soundness, and clinical significance. * Salman Akhtar, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College; Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia *
This remarkable book manages to be sophisticated, deeply thoughtful, expressive, lively and practical at the same time. It offers an approach to ethics focused especially on psychoanalysis but applicable to all forms of psychotherapy and elsewhere too. Few authors have absorbed the challenge of the philosophy of ethics so completely and demonstrated so brilliantly not only that it is a vital element in regulating psychoanalysis but also that it has the capacity to guide and strengthen psychotherapeutic training and practice for the benefit of therapists and patients alike. * Professor Stephen Frosh, Department of Psychosocial Studies Birkbeck, University of London and author of Those Who Come After:Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness. *
The most important skill in life is how to think ethically. Alessandra Lemma teaches this skill to psychotherapists. To engage in rational ethical deliberation in a mind propelled by unconscious impulses is the human challenge. Stunning and original, wise and empathic. A classic in practical ethics. * Professor Julian Savulescu, Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor in Medical Ethics; Director, Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore and Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics Co-Director, Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford *
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: The unbearable silence of responsibility 2: Bioethical principles 3: A psychoanalytic principled approach 4: The ethics of listening 5: On getting it wrong 6: Apologies matter 7: Principles in action 8: Developing the ethical chóros Epilogue: A plea for a measure of irony
