Types

• All three fields of this ethics code are based around the idea of professionalism. Issues of consent, privacy, and conflict of interest dominate this code. All major clinical decisions must have the informed consent of the patient (or that patient's legal guardian). All professionals in this field must take responsibility for their clinical actions. No professional in this field can enter in a counseling relationship with those who they know personally, and no relationships can develop after the counseling is completed.
  
  

Features

• The structure of the code of ethics is conceptually overlapping. Respect, integrity and propriety are not mutually exclusive concepts, but they do have their own areas of emphasis. Respect refers to the rights of patients, propriety refers to the competence and professional development of counselors, while integrity focuses on the position of power and trust that the counseling relationship confers on the professional.
  
  

Function

• Since most counselors are dealing with vulnerable people at a difficult time in their lives, many opportunities for exploitation present themselves. This code of ethics seeks to maintain a professional distance between counselor and patient within the bounds of the counselor's field of expertise. The patient must be treated as a person, not a clinical subject. The uniqueness of the patient is stressed rather than the mechanical application of academic categories to patients. Patients are unique and therefore, clinical categories are strictly relative.
  
  

Professional Benefit

• This code of ethics forces professional counselors to regularly take stock of themselves. Professionals must know their limits, keep an emotional distance and regularly assess whether or not their counseling is working for the patient, regardless of the issues of personal or professional pride that often interfere with these assessments. All the responsibility here is on the professional counselor on the basis of the power and trust that this position provides the psychologist.
  
  

Considerations

• All professionals in this field must push the limits of objectivity and honesty. These are well-educated professionals who are expected to have advanced capacity for introspection. Pride and professional prejudices have no place in this work. Two overriding issues are present here: the position of the patient as troubled, and the position of the counselor as an authority figure. This duality is the cause of all ethical problems in the counselor relationship and, as a result, threads through this entire document, holding it all together.