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Writer's picturematilde tomat

ethics : considerations

I have explored in depth my concept on ethics last year and this following post (here) and what I wrote there still stands true. At the sdame time, I am revisiting here some of the concepts, thinking about what I made and what I will be doing, and what I am writing.

As a starting point, I am using ther BACP Ethical Framework, which underpins my own work as a therapist. You can find the full document here.

What I was interested in exploring was point 3 as follows:

3. Our fundamental values include a commitment to:



  1. respecting human rights and dignity

  2. alleviating symptoms of personal distress and suffering

  3. enhancing people’s wellbeing and capabilities

  4. improving the quality of relationships between people

  5. increasing personal resilience and effectiveness

  6. facilitating a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned within their personal and cultural context

  7. appreciating the variety of human experience and culture

  8. protecting the safety of clients

  9. ensuring the integrity of practitioner-client relationships

  10. enhancing the quality of professional knowledge and its application

  11. striving for the fair and adequate provision of services

How does this apply to me as an artist, and/or a therapist? I would still respectfully human rights and their dignity, but I am not prepared to shelter / protect people when making art (see my Milk of Human Kindness here) and my deep desire of not censoring myself to comfort people’s ignorance (as from quote on the blog). Hence, my aim as an artist is not to protect the viewer, nor their safety.

In my book, I tell the story of this woman who, while grieving, does want to die. I am not prepared nor intend to, avoid mentioning suicide, nor describing her emotional vulnerability just because some people might be affected by such a subject. People have the freedom to choose to read or not to read my book, to look at my art or not. I expect to fully use the same freedom in making art.

At the same time, there is art (and music, performances, movies, etc) out there which I don’t like or that I might find offensive or pointless or aggressive or which I might think that unnecessarily display, for example, sexualised images for no real reason if only to attract attention. I am not affected by the art (etc) in itself, but at the same time I choose not to look at it. With the same attitude in mind, I expect people to look or not look at what I make, or to read or not read what I write.

I am still also aware that I do abide by the principle of non-maleficent: I am not making my own art or writing about the desire to die in order to, with the purpose of offending or hurting people. That’s not my aim.

As per personal qualities as described by the BACP, I have noticed some resemblances with my own practice:

12. Key personal qualities to which members and registrants are strongly encouraged to aspire include:



  1. Candour: openness with clients about anything that places them at risk of harm or causes actual harm

  2. Care: benevolent, responsible and competent attentiveness to someone’s needs, wellbeing and personal agency

  3. Courage: the capacity to act in spite of known fears, risks and uncertainty 

  4. Diligence: the conscientious deployment of the skills and knowledge needed to achieve a beneficial outcome

  5. Empathy: the ability to communicate understanding of another person’s experience from that person’s perspective

  6. Fairness: impartial and principled in decisions and actions concerning others in ways that promote equality of opportunity and maximise the capability of the people concerned 

  7. Humility: the ability to assess accurately and acknowledge one’s own strengths and weaknesses 

  8. Identity: sense of self in relationship to others that forms the basis of responsibility, resilience and motivation 

  9. Integrity: commitment to being moral in dealings with others, including personal straightforwardness, honesty and coherence 

  10. Resilience: the capacity to work with the client’s concerns without being personally diminished 

  11. Respect: showing appropriate esteem for people and their understanding of themselves 

  12. Sincerity: a personal commitment to consistency between what is professed and what is done 

  13. Wisdom: possession of sound judgement that informs practice

I am thinking about resilience, courage, integrity, sincerity, humility.

These are just some ideas that popped into my mind today while showing my work LEGACY at a colleague of mine (therapist). We have been discussing some of these issues and others, which made me think about the option of an evolution of my work when linked to the FMP. So, I am not going into details now. I just wanted to record on here some ideas for later!

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