Organizational Authority and Professional Responsibility in Clinical Sociology

When, if ever, are clinical sociologists justified in accepting the directives of employers and management sponsors as setting the parameters within which they proceed with their work? In particular, is it ever permissible for clinical sociologists to accept an employer\u27s or a manager-sponsor\u27s definition of a problem to be studied, even though they may not view it as the more fundamental problem needing study in the situation? These questions are important for understanding the professional role and moral responsibilities of practitioners in the still-coalescing profession of clinical sociology. They also have increasing practical importance at a time when job opportunities for sociologists are shifting from academia to industry and government-both within organizations as employees and as external organizational consultants

A Review of Phil Washburn, Philosophical Dilemmas: Building a Worldview

Lucidly written, this extensive and very original introduction to philosophy features over fifty brief, jargon-free essays arranged in pairs. Each pair answers one of the principal philosophical questions, such as Does God exist? or Are we free? , with two opposing points of view. On the topic of relativism, for example, one essay argues that morality is created by society and relative to it, while the other claims that moral standards are absolute and universal. Each essay takes a definite stand and promotes it vigorously, creating a sharp contrast between the two positions. While the essays often employ standard arguments of great philosophers, they present the ideas in contemporary language with vivid examples. The accessible style and conflicting answers engage students and promote class discussion. While other textbooks present a series of excerpts and theories without attempting to coordinate them into a larger picture, Philosophical Dilemmas encourages students in introductory philosophy courses to think for themselves and to begin constructing their own worldviews

Virtuous Giving: Philanthropy, Voluntary Service, and Caring

Writing for the general reader, Mike Martin explores the philosophic basis of philanthropy— virtuous giving. This book will be welcome reading for anyone who has pondered what caring and giving mean for a good society.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/philosophy_books/1008/thumbnail.jp

Truth and Healing a Veteran\u27s Depression

Comments on an article by Christopher Bailey (see record 2009-24345-002). Dr. Christopher Bailey portrays an American veteran, Colin, who slips into a serious but not severe depression upon returning from the Iraq War, After ruling out post-traumatic stress disorder, the psychiatrist comes to believe that Colin\u27s depression is tied to his feelings of being a wimp, of not having done his part or proven his manhood, and of losing his chance to become a hero because he had been assigned non-combat duty—feelings that the psychiatrist glosses (misleadingly?) as a painful lack of wounds. (I speak of the the psychiatrist, rather than Dr. Bailey, in case some details of the case are constructed). Still another issue is the extent to which moral values shape the very definition of mental disorders and mental health. As a society, we have come to define virtually all forms of suffering that disrupt morally desirable functioning as pathological. Certainly there are grounds for caution about how far we have gone in medicalizing depression, but I see wisdom in the trend, assuming we appreciate how morality and mental health are interwoven dimensions of both mental disorders and strengths

A Review of David H. Smith, Entrusted: The Moral Responsibilities of Trusteeship

Entrusted provides a much needed contribution to the literature on ethics in the healthcare arena

Depression: Illness, Insight, and Identity

Depression needs to be understood within interdisciplinary scientific, biopsychosocial, therapeutic frameworks, but it also has a moral dimension. The tendency to oppose moral and therapeutic perspectives, as well as to replace moral outlooks with mental-health outlooks, handicaps thinking about depression and many other topics. John Stuart Mill\u27s midlife crisis illustrates how an experience of depression can be both a sickness and a source of moral insight. Furthermore, therapy has a moral dimension, and conversely a humane outlook is interwoven with health-oriented approaches and avoids excessive blaming and guilt. Complicating matters, depression sometimes undermines moral autonomy, and there is a continuum between healthy and unhealthy depression

Meaningful Work: Rethinking Professional Ethics

As commonly understood, professional ethics consists of shared duties and episodic dilemmas--the responsibilities incumbent on all members of specific professions joined together with the dilemmas that arise when these responsibilities conflict. Martin challenges this consensus paradigm as he rethinks professional ethics to include personal commitments and ideals, of which many are not mandatory. Using specific examples from a wide range of professions, including medicine, law, high school teaching, journalism, engineering, and ministry, he explores how personal commitments motivate, guide, and give meaning to work.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/philosophy_books/1003/thumbnail.jp

Ethics as Therapy: Philosophical Counseling and Psychological Health

From the inception of philosophical counseling an attempt was made to distinguish it from (psychological) therapy by insisting that therapy could not be more misleading. It is true that philosophical counselors should not pretend to be able to heal major mental illness; nevertheless they do contribute to positive health—health understood as something more than the absence of mental disease. This thesis is developed by critiquing Lou Marinoff’s book, Plato not Prozac!, but also by ranging more widely in the literature on philosophical counseling. I also interpret philosophical counseling as a form of philosophical ethics

Professional and Ordinary Morality: A Reply to Freedman

Mike Martin responds to the article Professional and Ordinary Morality

Depression and Moral Health: A Response to the Commentary

S. Nassir Ghaemi tells us that whereas neurologists are sometimes accused of admiring disease rather than treating it, psychiatrists seek to cure disease even when they do not understand it. At the same time, he notes that Freud had both theoretical and practical interests that occasionally point in different directions, and psychiatrists have learned that theoretical understanding of the sources of suffering does not always translate directly into useful clinical practice. For their part, philosophers are often criticized for indulging in armchair speculation that yields neither empirical understanding nor practical efficacy. Writing as a philosopher in Depression: Illness, Insight, and Identity, I had hoped to engage both scientific and therapeutic interests while linking them to humanistic concerns about values. Ghaemi\u27s emphasis is primarily therapeutic--to help, to heal--but he seems generally sympathetic to my goal of integrating moral and therapeutic perspectives. I benefited from his cautions about the need to pursue that integration with close attention to therapeutic imperatives