ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF THE PSYCHOLOGIST’S ACTIVITY IN THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING

Abstract

The article is devoted to comprehension of a problem of ethical dimensions of psychologist’ professional activity. The content of fundamental ethical norms, which regulates the activity of psychologists in the USA, Europe and Ukraine, is analyzed. A comparative analysis of the main categories and requirements of the ethical codes of authoritative international associations of psychologists is carried out. It is established that the ethical principles of psychologists’ professional activity are aimed at the confirmation of universal humanitarian and social values; the main among them is respect for the person, protection of human rights, sense of responsibility, honesty and sincerity in relation to the client, professional competence. The conducted research showed that psychologist’s ethical code is a sufficiently reliable basis for building an effective psychological practice, at the same time it does not resolve all its contradictions, and sometimes comes into collision with the forms of its organization. A number of discussion aspects in the field of ethical regulation of the psychologist’s activities are outlined and ethical dilemmas encountered by a professional in the process of psychological practice are given.

An empirical study of psychologist’s and client’s representations of ethical aspects of psychological counseling was carried out using an author’s questionnaire based on the psychologist’s ethical code. The main principles reflected in the ethical code of the European Federation of Professional Psychological Associations were selected as a categories of content analysis of psychologist’s and client’s statements: respect for the client’s rights and dignity, responsibility, competence, honesty and integrity. Content analysis of unfinished sentences, linguistic and semantic analysis of a statement frequency, Student's t-criterion, and Pearson correlation coefficient were used for the data processing.

An empirical study found out that psychologist’s representation about ethical principles of the activity is fairly consistent and consequential, correspond to the thesis of the ethical code, as well as with the content of client’s representations. At the same time, differences in the psychologist’s and client’s representations about the importance of ethical principles (respect for the client’s rights and dignity, responsibility, competence, honesty and integrity) and emotional aspects of interaction, psychologist’s recommendations are pinpointed. This is determined by the different focus of psychologist’s and client’s attention during counseling: more psychologists’ orientation on a certain “framework” and the rules of interaction, and client’s – in fact, on emotional support, which reflects the various but interdepended parts of counseling. At the same time, ethical requirements, not being the subject of work with the client, provide security, trust, cooperation – the exactly conditions which are the basis of effective psychological assistance to the client.