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I want to highly recommend Kylea's book, The Ethics of Caring. It is truly in a class by itself in the literature on ethics in therapy. I've read many books in this area and have been on a Board responsible for reviewing and approving the code of ethics for a large professional association, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapists (AAMFT), and, to my knowledge, Kylea's book is unique in the field. It combines the rigors of professionalism with a deep and complex understanding of the human heart, soul and mind. It really is an important book. If you are a professor or teacher you might want to consider it as required reading.
Sara Wright, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Board Member, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT)
Past-President, Minnesota Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (MAMFT) 7/8/02
Each one of the "helping professions" has its own professional organization and its own professional code of ethics. There are books written to help counselors and therapists understand these codes and apply them to perplexing situations. Most such books read like legal casebooks. The idea is to help us avoid the consequences of code infractions: professional sanctions or even lawsuits. The code itself is not to be questioned, just applied. That is certainly important information for professional practitioners who want to keep their licenses and avoid liability suits. But it's not the whole story. We need to think about avoiding harm to clients and ourselves, of course. But it's surely at least as important to think about how to go beyond what is proper or legal to what is best. Taylor's approach does this. She's not satisfied with just avoiding preventable problems. Her goal, instead, is to help her readers create and maintain "right relationship" with their clients. She's also concerned to help practitioners develop an internal locus of control, a strong personal sense of wise, kind and helpful ways to work with people, an ethic of care instead of rules. Because of this, you won't find dogmatic judgmental statements in this book. Instead, Taylor takes a nuanced and compassionate approach. By understanding how good people become confused about what they should or should not do, we are both warned and strengthened. Her chapters on money, sex and power contain some of the most insightful discussions of these complex issues that I have ever seen.
Judy Harrow, Reviewer
June 2002 Newsletter of the New Jersey Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling
The Ethics of Caring is an extraordinarily helpful and groundbreaking new book for healers, clergy, therapists, and bodyworkers that illuminates what is necessary to offer wise and trustworthy relations to their clients. The Ethics of Caring alerts healers not to underestimate the power of energies that arise in nonordinary states through transference and countertransference, and the palpable physical, emotional, and psychic vulnerabilities that come in these states.
Jack Kornfield, Ph.D, author of After the Ecstacy, The Laundry, A Path with Heart From his Foreword in The Ethics of Caring
Serious ethical considerations represent an important aspect of any therapeutic endeavor. The work with non-ordinary states of consciousness brings specific new challenges and problems that go beyond those encountered in traditional verbal and experiential approaches. Kylea Taylor's book, The Ethics of Caring, is a pioneering venture into these new territories, providing important guidelines for practitioners and students.
Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D, author of The Future of Psychology, The Holotropic Mind, The Adventure of Self-Discovery, Beyond the Brain, Realms of the Human Unconscious and co-author of The Stormy Search for Self.
This is a wonderful resource book that can be an invaluable professional guide for maintaining ethics and integrity within the helping professions.
Angeles Arrien, Ph.D, author of The Four-Fold Way, and The Tarot Handbook.
The Ethics of Caring is a state of the art approach to dealing with relationship issues and in particular body contact arising in therapy. Her courage will inspire others to tackle issues which break open the boundary between politics and individual experience.
Arnold Mindell, Ph.D, author of The Quantum Mind, The Leader as Martial Artist, Sitting in the Fire, The Shaman's Body, The Dreambody in Relationships, and Coma
The Ethics of Caring is an unique book addressing in an honest and humble way the dangers and pitfalls that all therapists face daily in their practices. It treats the specialized conditions of altered consciousness, therapeutically induced or otherwise, in a coherent and logically consistent way. It offers a conceptual framework which is widely accepted outside our culture, but has not been previously discussed in any standard texts on either ethics or therapeutic interpersonal dynamics (e.g., transference and countertransference.) This book is exceptionally valuable to students and practicing therapists alike.
Robert R. Newport, M.D, psychiatrist
We have found that the usefulness and relevancy of The Ethics of Caring grows with the helping professional as she/he transits the stages from novice to seasoned one....caring ethics is a spiritual path.
Becky Williams, Director, Twin Lakes College of the Healing Arts, Santa Cruz, CA
If you want to trust your process safely, whether as therapist or as client, this book is indispensable reading. Every therapist can use it as a bedside book, using the self-reflections provided at the end of each chapter as meditations to end the day well.
Joy Manne, author of Soul Therapy, from The Therapist
"In each section the reader is given clear examples and lists of questions which help probe the reader's own inner work in relation to that given chapter. You do not walk away from this book without a bit of self-examination and without additional viewpoints from which to approach clients."
Kathleen Silver, from review on Breathnet listserv
"This book is six years old. Why am I reviewing it now? Because, to my chagrin, I only just discovered it. I wish I'd read it much sooner. In my opinion, The Ethics of Caring can begin to do for Pagan elders what Robin Wood's equally excellent When, Why ... If does for our beginners. Fortunately, it's still easily available through the publisher at: hanfordmead.com
"There are few written resources for those of us who teach Pagan spirituality, lead covens or groves, or serve as religious elders in the NeoPagan movement. For now, we need to glean good ideas and information from non-Pagan writing. As long as we do this, we will also need to struggle with problems of translation and adaptation. We tend to balk at externally imposed rules of any kind, especially at those that seem simplistic or rigid, and most especially at blanket prohibitions. We prefer 'high choice' situational ethics which emphasize freedom and responsibility over obedience.
"Taylor's very different approach is much more appropriate for us, in two major ways. She's not satisfied with just avoiding preventable problems. Her goal, instead, is to help her readers create and maintain 'right relationship' with their clients and to guide them toward developing an 'internal locus of control,' a personal sense of the wise, kind and helpful ways to work with people, creating an ethic of care instead of rules. Taylor takes a nuanced and compassionate approach. By understanding how good people become confused about what they should or should not do, we are both warned and strengthened. Her chapters on money, sex and power contain some of the most insightful discussions of these complex issues that I have ever seen.
"The book's structure is based on the chakra system. Because many of us are familiar with the chakras, the information will be easy for us to assimilate. The writing is mostly clear and accessible, with good endnotes and a glossary for those who are not familiar with some of the jargon. What's more, Taylor's own therapeutic practice, as with many alternative or New Age approaches, involves a lot of work with clients in altered states of consciousness. So the core of the book is an exploration of the special needs, issues and vulnerabilities of people who are exploring non-ordinary reality, which we would call the Inner Planes or the Otherworld. This strong emphasis is obviously and directly applicable to our ways. Although I have a few quibbles, this is the best book of its kind currently available. Recommended."
Judy Harrow, Pan Gaia magazine
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The Ethics of Caring
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 - An Ethic of Relationship
Honoring the web of life
What is ethics?
Moving toward wholeness
Ethics in the context of profound work with clients
What is ethical behavior?
Ethical development requires transcendence
Chapter 2 - Profound and Intense Client Experiences
What is a nonordinary state of consciousness?
Clients in ordinary states of consciousness
Nonordinary states in ordinary therapy
Spontaneously occurring nonordinary states of consciousness
Inducing nonordinary states therapeutically
The role of awareness of client and therapist in nonordinary states
Chapter 3 - The Special Needs of Clients in Nonordinary States of Consciousness
Categories of ethical issues
Ethics common to all work with clients
Ethical issues pertaining specifically to clients in nonordinary states
Using an expanded therapeutic paradigm
The need for special competencies in the therapist
Safe setting needs
Close attention to set and setting
Greater client suggestibility
Greater client security needs
Informed consent issues
Understanding a regressed client's primary language
Physical touch issues in the therapeutic relationship
Integrating profound experiences
Cognitive dissonance
Somatic or psychospiritual crisis
Client's needs for nurturing, sexual contact, and spiritual connection
Subtle and compelling countertransference issues
Chapter 4 - A Model for Examining Our Vulnerabilities
The model and its metaphors
The concept of right relationship
Chapter 5 - Money
Money-The first center
Countertransference-Spiritual longings and fears related to money, change, and security
Countertransference-Personal desires and fears related to money, change, and security
Transference related to money, change, and security
Using the energy of money, change, and security appropriately
Self-reflection on money, change, and security
Cross-referencing money, change, and security with issues in other centers
Chapter 6 - Sex
Sex-The second center
Countertransference-Spiritual longings and fears related to sex
Countertransference-Personal desires and fears related to sex
Transference related to sex
Using the energy of sex appropriately
Self-reflection on sex
Cross-referencing sex issues with issues in other centers
Chapter 7 - Power
Power-The third center
Countertransference-Spiritual longings and fears related to power
Countertransference-Personal desires and fears related to power
Transference related to power
Using the energy of power appropriately
Self-reflection on power
Cross-referencing power with issues in other centers
Chapter 8 - Love
Love-The fourth center
Countertransference-Spiritual longings and fears related to love
Countertransference-Personal desires and fears related to love
Transference related to love
Using the energy of love appropriately
Self-reflection on love
Cross-referencing love issue with issues in other centers
Chapter 9 - Truth
Truth-The fourth center
Countertransference-Spiritual longings and fears related to truth
Countertransference-Personal desires and fears related to truth
Transference related to truth
Using the energy of truth appropriately
Self-reflection on truth
Cross-referencing truth issues with issues in other centers
Chapter 10 - Insight
Insight-The sixth center
Countertransference-Spiritual longings and fears related to insight
Countertransference-Personal desires and fears related to insight
Transference related to insight
Using the energy of insight appropriately
Self-reflection on insight
Cross-referencing insight with issues in other centers
Chapter 11 - Oneness
Oneness-The seventh center
Countertransference-Spiritual longings and fears related to oneness
Countertransference-Personal desires and fears related to oneness
Transference related to oneness
Using the energy of oneness appropriately
Self-reflection on oneness
Cross-referencing oneness with issues in other centers
Chapter 12 - Vulnerabilities to Unethical Behavior
Disregard for the client
Caregiver burnout
Ignorance of the pitfalls
Underestimation of the power of nonordinary states of consciousness (and transference) to affect us
Our unexamined personal issues (countertransference)
Our unacknowledged longing (countertransference) for love and spiritual connection
Chapter 13 - Keys to Professional Ethical Behavior
Authentic caring
Willingness to examine our own motivations
Willingness to tell the truth
Telling the truth to ourselves
Telling the truth to ourselves about our defense mechanisms
Telling the truth to our peers
Telling the truth to clients
Willingness to ask for help (consultation) and to learn
The aftermath of ethical misconduct
Strategies for preventing misconduct
Chapter 14 - Expanding Ethical Consciousness in Community
Incentives for ethical community
Truth-telling and organizational integrity
"Leader of a movement" syndrome
Organizational support of personal growth for practitioners
Uniting to defend the ethics and efficacy of a particular system
Human response to ethics problems
Chapter 15 - Creating Ethical Guidelines
Expanding ethical consciousness through written codes
Creating our own inner "ethical codes"
Glossary
End Notes
Index
263 pp
The Ethics of Caring: Honoring the Web of Life in Our Professional Caring Relationships
Chapter One
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.