Chapter 1 - An Ethic of Relationship

Excerpts:

An ethic of care involves a morality
grounded in relationship and response
- Rita Manning

Ethics has to do with the most interesting parts of human life: sex, relationship, self-understanding, love, and mysticism. Ethics, like sex (which it often seems to concern), is arousing, engaging, and humorous. The consideration of ethics has the potential to expand self-knowledge and self-concept, and to improve relationships.

Ethics concerns relationship. It is about the inner relationships of our values to actions. It is interaction between one belief and another, one desire and another, one fear and another. Ethics is the process by which we sort out what best creates inner and outer harmony in our lives.

Honoring the web of life

Ethical behavior stems from the internal congruency and harmony between our values and our actions. Ethical behavior also develops from the therapist's sense of external connection. Using nonordinary states of consciousness, the therapist works with not only all parts of a client, but all parts of the network to which the client is connected (or from which she has become disconnected). She works with those parts physically, emotionally, cognitively, socially, and existentially or spiritually. Emotional, physical, and spiritual healing takes into account the sociopolitical system (and perhaps even the cosmological system) in which the therapeutic relationship itself exists. We speak more ethically and act more ethically when we begin to see and honor the web-like context of relationship that weaves between the many facets of both therapist and client. We naturally make more ethical decisions when we honor the intricate connections extending beyond the walls of the therapy session into family, culture, ecosystem, and even into unseen dimensions….What I do affects you. What you do affects me. What I do to you will ultimately affect me.

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