The Virtues in Psychiatric Practice

Description of The Virtues in Psychiatric Practice

There is growing recognition of the value dimension in psychiatric practice, from the contributions of positive psychology, of documenting the role of virtues in human flourishing and in the medical practice. However, the place of virtues in psychiatric treatment remains largely unexplored.

• How does a need for virtues fit into the processes of diagnosis, formulation, and treatment?
• What patient problems and factors should influence the therapist to promote forgiveness, gratitude, humility, or accountability?
• What is the relationship between the therapist’s and the patient’s virtues?
• What is the relevance of religious or spiritual resources to the formation of virtue?
• How does the cultivation of a particular virtue relate to psychodynamic, behavioral, existential, or spiritual approaches?
• What ethical questions does it raise, and what are its implications for psychiatric education?

The Virtues in Psychiatric Practice explores the role of the virtues in promoting human flourishing within the context of psychiatric practice. Chapters uses case examples to consider the incentives of fostering particular virtues; the place of this approach among psychodynamic, behavioral, existential, or spiritual approaches; and the relationship between the therapist’s and the patient’s values. Virtues highlighted include forgiveness, gratitude, accountability, self-transcendence, defiance, humility, compassion, love, and practical wisdom. This discussion is organized according to four basic capacities relevant to moral enhancement – self-control, niceness, intelligence, and positivity – which correspond to the four cardinal virtues according to Plato and Aquinas – temperance, justice, prudence, and courage.

Edited by psychiatrist and scholar John R. Peteet and written for psychiatrists, psychologists, and medical ethicists, this book will connect recent scientific research on virtue with clinical practice. It therefore aims to give readers a fuller appreciation of the importance of virtue in the therapeutic encounter, a clearer understanding of clinical indications for focusing on particular virtues, and enhanced practical ways of promoting human growth.

About the Author

John R. Peteet, M.D. has been a psychiatrist for over forty years at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Read more about: John R. Peteet