A Brief Moral History of Psychotherapy

To grasp its moral history, psychotherapy’s profoundly and pervasively moral dimensions, its inextricable sociocultural connections, critics’ challenges to moral claims, the historical origins of moral ideas and practices, and some key historical trajectories of psychotherapy are addressed. Connections among professions, professional ethics, and morality (construed broadly); moral understandings of psychological problems and goals; and moral considerations concerning therapy techniques and relationship styles are emphasized. Finally, some changing interrelationships among psychotherapy, the self, society, and morality are reviewed.