Psychology and ethics are disciplines that are closely related to a person’s individuality and their relationships with others. Consequently, these consider the two opposite, but rather similar areas at the same time. The individual’s inner condition influences his/her social behavior and external impact of people who surround him/her influences his mood. Ethical frames become so highly connected with psychology that the ethical code of behavior emerged. This is set of basic and general regulations for all the psychologists that may go against the social ethical issues as they are mainly based on individual ethics. However, such examples as maintenance of power inequality or labeling are common to unprofessional specialists (Brown, 1997). Therefore, ethical principles make the psychological science more attached to mankind and more humane.

Psychology not only explores the various mechanisms of individual behavior, but investigates the means of solving different internal and external conflicts, problems, traumas, and others. During the therapeutic session, a patient has to be frank and trusting to help a specialist see the causes. While the ethical approach considers unconscious behavior that was formed under various social impacts, later this may be done as the result of conscious choice (“On the Relation,” n.d.). As a result of the therapy, a new behavior forms. Likewise, ethical principles serve as some standard of valuable conduct that helps different, sometimes controversial, psychological methods follow the most beneficial templates of morality (“On the Relation,” n.d.). To accomplish this goal, a psychologist should consider public policy, inter-cultural relationships, ethnical and gender peculiarities. Additionally, avoiding dictatorship, morality ties people together and build a strong society with moral actions, and show people how they ought to treat each other to live a healthy and productive life (Haidt, 2007). The ethical principles are clearly presented by the American Psychological Association. Thus, a specialist is responsible for a client’s life; therefore he or she has to avoid any situations that may cause any harm. This responsibility means not only deeds, but also words including truthfulness with a client and between colleagues. Justice and respect for a patient’s human rights and dignity are very important to make the therapy successful. These principles cover not only relationships between a psychologist and a client, but also between public relations, researches, and publications, technical sides of the therapy (recordings, notes, etc.), and professional education (“Ethical Principles,” 2017).

As far as the basic ethical principles of psychology were concerned, I would like to mark several ones that are the most important for me. First of all, this is the responsibility for a client, his rights and dignity. Psychological therapy is very deep and complicated process that requires a specialist’s professional approach and a patient’s trustfulness and own work. Therapy may cure or bring the relief and, in contrast, may harm or even cause death. Thus, a real psychotherapist treats a patient very carefully, without dominance or labeling, basing on trust and justice during mutual interrelations. Likewise, these principles of responsibility and justice can be applied to relations will peers, scientists, and the public during the research process or public relationships. As for the research process, and in dissertation research, in particular, it is one of the main sources of vital, practical information that drives the psychological science forward. The clarity and absence of plagiarism makes any theoretical or practical research worth of its organization. It involves the participants (clients, other specialists, students, ordinary people, and animals), researchers, and public (“Ethical Principles,” 2017). Therefore, it is a rather extensive and important process that influences many people’s occupation and life. Considering this importance, the responsibility must be the main principle during the practical research. None of the participants should be involved in violence on physical or mental levels, dishonesty, disrespect or discrimination, violation of privacy issues or silence, facing any kind of information. In order to become beneficial to the scientific community and society in general, the principle of responsibility should be the base of any research.

At the beginning of its foundation, the American Psychological Association did not use any defined or special ethical standards in its work. At that time, the only unethical issues were plagiarism and the freedom of academic research. Thus, nearly about sixty years there was no ethical code, however, with the appearance of many other informal problems, it was claimed to start developing a set of ethical principles of psychology (Pope & Vetter, 1992). Since 1953, the code has been regularly developed (“Ethical Principles,” 2017). Every evident case of some controversial behavior of a psychologist in relationships with a patient or with the public was marked and considered from the ethical position. Consequently, there were nearly twelve editions of the code (“Ethical Principles,” 2017). The importance of ethical implementation reveals in the promotion of morality in the field of psychology. Psychology, in general, does not advocate only moral behavior, but is interested in personality itself and its relationships. While ethics studies what is moral and how people should behave to receive the most mutually beneficial result. In other words, ethics make psychology more humane. Thus, the history of ethical implementation is useful to know in order to see what fields became protected from violence and how psychology started obtaining more of humanistic attitude to personality.

Overall, ethics and psychology have the general common ground – a human and their relationships. Though, psychologists do not give morality the top priority, while the ethics aims specifically at this. Eventually, the code of ethics was implemented in the American Psychological Association and improved. These actions were necessary because of the growth of informal and controversial cases inside and outside psychotherapy. Now, these ethical standards cover nearly every aspect of individual rights, personal and public relationships of the specialists that highly improve the therapy.

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