Influences on Moral and Ethical Development
Moral sensitivity plays a vast part in my influences on moral and ethical growth. Moral sensitivity shows me how my beliefs can affect some other person. It also exhibits my decision making skill on what is best for my client. Research states that “Moral Sensitivity (moral awareness), as described by Rest (1994), refers to an individual’s ability to recognize that a situation contains a moral issue” (Holmes & Lincoln, 2011, P.57). Having the ability as a counselor to pinpoint that there is a moral issue requires the realization that your activity can be harmful or beneficial for the client. This helps you to realize that your moral outlook contains some truth to it. Also, I learned that you should never want to do anything to harm your client and be sensitive to their needs. Moral sensitivity protects the well-being of an entire society. Keeping our emotions together while performing our jobs shows that we know how to behave in an ethical manner. It shows not only that we can pinpoint a problem, but we are fully aware of all the ethical results that go along with it. Your client is entering a relationship with you, with the hope of trusting you with the information they are telling you. As a counselor, you are supposed to be patient, responding to their needs, and establishing a moral motivation towards their recovery. The client is not always going to make rational decisions, and the counselor is there to intervene within the process.
Moral motivation gives me the opportunity to do what is right according to the state laws in which I practice. My goal is to help people with life changing decisions. Research also states that “Moral motivation (moral intention) refers to the intention...
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...t to exhibit ethical sensitivity by actively listening, accepting responsibility for our actions, and putting ourselves in the client’s shoes (Herlihy & Remley, 2014).
Values Reexamined in Course
There are many values that I examined in this course. As a future mental health counselor, I accept and value all that I have absorbed to make my future career a reality. Most importantly, I have learned to do what is ethically right when it comes to obeying all state laws. The responsibility of a counselor is to gain an understanding of their client background and develop a strong counselor-patient relationship. I have reexamined that making choices that are appropriate and not jeopardize losing my license as a result of not being responsible for my client. Overall, the information learned in this course will forever imprint in my passion as a mental health professional.
When one thinks about morals, he or she often find himself in difficulty. It is a fact that morals are mostly passed from one generation to another. However, we all face challenges when trying to understand whether they are all accurate or not. To start with, Morals are those values that normally protect life and always respectful of the dual life value of individual and others. Therefore, Morals are those rules that normally govern actions that re wrong or right. We know that morals may be for all people in the society or individual beliefs in the society. Some of the great morals include freedom, charity, truth, honesty and patience and all of them have a common goal. It is a fact that when they function well in the society, they end up protecting and enhancing life. These morals need to be examined always to make sure that they are performing their mission of protecting life. As a matter of fact, morals are derived from the government and society, self and religion. When morals are derived from the government and society, they tend to change as the morals and laws of the society changes. An example of the changes is seen in the cases of marriage versus individuals living together. It is true that in the past generation, it was quite rare to see any couple living together without having any legal matrimonial ceremony. However, this
Aspirational ethics reach toward higher standards than those of mandatory ethics, requiring the counselor to possess a stronger sense of duty. These principles guide counselors to do more than simply meet the “letter of the law” of the ethics code. The welfare of the client becomes the main focus of the counselor, who takes into consideration not only the interventions, but also the effects on the client. (Kottler & Shepard, 2011) Aspirational ethics include, but are not limited to the following principles.
At the beginning of this paper I mentioned that there are eight stages in the psychosocial development theory starting with trust vs. mistrust. This stage begins at birth to one year of age. This is when I should have formed a trust with my primary caregiver or caregivers. My dad was absent most of this stage, so my mother was my primary caregiver. Since she never taught me good behavior, right from wrong, and was uncaring when I was born, I did not feel safe or secure around her. I was told through family members that she was unable to hold me without me screaming all the time, and that the doctor said I suffered from anxiety at infancy because I could feel the tension of my mother’s stress, anger, and anxiety towards me. The beginning of me learning to mistrust, and feeling
Axiology is the study of the Nature of Values. As an Existentialist I believe that a person’s choices are what creates the human being. As I am a military child, I have had a very strict life. While most of the values I learned were from my home life, school and other sources backed these values up. I will focus on my top three values which are respect, responsibility, and understanding. The others that will guide my practice are discipline, trying your best, kindness, and commitment. The first value that came to my mind was respect. Respect is very important because you must earn others respect and vice versa. I learned this, first, through my home, by respecting my parent’s wishes, even if it was not something I agreed with. Thus in turn,
Lawrence Kohlberg theorized that morality has more to do with decisions than fixed behaviors. After studying several groups of people and their responses to certain moral problems, he was able to identify “three main levels of moral reasoning, with two substages within each level” (Passer & Smith, 2011). Prior to coming to West Point, my moral decisions were made along the lines of conventional moral reasoning, the second level, by conforming to the expectations of society. Within this level, I reasoned at stage three where morality is based on winning approval from parents, authority figures, and peers. During my first year of high school, I remember taking the AP World History exam and finding myself wanting to cheat on
Human reason has not always been a presence in our daily lives. Doing the right thing, being ethical, and making educated decisions, one would think, are the ideal principles behind human nature. Sadly, only in more recent times has human reason shed its good grace on more modern societies. For many centuries, constant war and the reconstruction to nations, countries, and empires led to the rise and fall of many different leaders and in tow their governments. Within such societies, political spokesmen like Machiavelli, Locke, and Marx, interpret their ideas to the people, which still remain significant to this day. One of their main focuses was to raise awareness, on their ideas on trust and human reason. While Locke and Marx urge us to have faith in human reason, as a positive means to society, Machiavelli would claim the contrary. The concept of human nature and reason to both John Locke and Karl Marx juxtaposes that of Machiavelli’s, and their notions derive from their different eras, economies, environments, and strict governments, which ultimately shaped their ideologies on human nature.
Since 1976, The American Mental Health Counselors Association has been committed to establishing and promoting vigorous standards for education and training, professional practice, and professional ethics for Clinical Mental Health Counselors. So far, this association have 7,000 clinical mental health counselors but its organization is continuously growing (AMHCA).” “The American Mental Health Counselors Association have licensures laws in all 50 states, and the association seeks to enhance the practice of clinical mental health counseling and to promote standards for clinical education and clinical practice that anticipate the future roles of Clinical Mental Health Counselors within the broader health care system. This association was ultimately put together to define and promote professional identity of mental health counselors (AMHCA).”
“Decreased moral standards and ethics related to ignorance to accepted social behavior standards”. Morality is defined as an understanding and distinguishing right and wrong and behaving according to socially accepted standards (The Definition of Morality, 2002). People can be inconsiderate and conflictful. From the assessment, it was evident that some people have lack of respect to other’s personal properties and even their own. Abandoned houses and trash on properties suggest social and moral degradations. Some of the contributing factors might be poverty, unemployment, and mental illnesses. Lack of morality might be a problem that affects other states and even countries. However, in some areas of Spokane, it is evident that people
This model identifies five moral principles which are: justice, autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and fidelity. These fundamental guidelines are used to clarify issues that involve any given situation. Ethical guidelines may not address all situations, but will allow a counselor to explore ethical dilemmas and conflicting issues. Counselors are responsible to encourage clients to make their own appropriate decisions and to act on their own values. Two important things to consider when counseling client are: autonomous encouragement helps clients understand how their decisions and values that may or may not receive within the context of the society; they live in or may impinge on the rights of others (Kitchener,
So your opinions on the topic may or may not help out the situation and also in some unfortunate cases can send the client into a ‘downward spiral’. By expressing your ethical issues on the topic to your client you may trigger unwanted emotions. These unwanted emotions can drive the client to hurt themselves or even make the client take legal actions towards the counselor. Ways to prevent this from happening is learning your own self-control and what your limits are when its comes to dealing the client. “You want to consider the best action that will protect your client’s needs, but you also want to ask yourself: What is the best action to protect the profession and myself? (Berton, J. D. (2014). Make the Rule to Break the Rule: Setting Your Ethical Standards. Counselor: The Magazine For Addiction Professionals, 15(5), 10-12
Lawrence Kohlberg conducted research on the moral development of children. He wanted to understand how they develop a sense of right or wrong and how justice is served. Kohlberg used surveys in which he included moral dilemmas where he asked the subjects to evaluate a moral conflict. Through his studies, Kohlberg observed that moral growth and development precedes through stages such as those of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. He theorized that moral growth begins at the beginning of life and continues until the day one dies. He believed that people proceed through each stage of moral development consecutively without skipping or going back to a previous stage. The stages of thought processing, implying qualitatively different modes of thinking and of problem solving are included in the three levels of pre-conventional, conventional and post conventional development. (2)
Truth, virtue, morality and sin are subjects of much controversy and debate in Western culture and the Church—these topics become more amplified especially within the confines of our political system. As American society ventures further away from the Christian ideals and principles once implemented at the foundations of our nation, these concepts continue to blur and become less important to the collective mind of our nation. Some may argue that these principles should remain separate from government and the political arena, stating that Christian ideals such as these are “antiquated” or “out of touch” with the direction society is heading; however, one ought to argue that government should never be separate from these ideals and it was the
Why be moral? This is a question that I’ve asked myself for many weeks since the beginning of this class. I wanted to know why is being moral so important to some people myself included. This also lead me to another question, which is why is it easier for some people and harder for others to be moral? First, let 's understand what it is to be moral. One definition of moral is concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character. Another definition is a person 's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do. From both of these definitions, we get that being moral concerns right and wrong and being able to differentiation from both of those and having your actions reflect what you believe is right and wrong.
The first two stages of Kohlber’s moral development fall under “Preconventional Morality” which is the first level (Williams & Arrigo, 2012). These stages focus on children from ages one to ten (Williams & Arrigo, 2012). I basically agree with the concept of these stages because young children are clearly responsive to learning right and wrong through the use of some form of punishment (Williams & Arrigo, 2012). However, these two initial stages (punishment and obedience orientation & instrumental purpose and exchange orientation) must have competent authority figures, which are normally going to be the parents for children those ages. In the absence of competent authority figures, which is realism for many children, I believe these two
Morality is the ability to distinguish what is right or wrong. It guides the individual on differentiating good and bad behaviors. Moral people make the proper decision in their actions. On the other side, immoral people tend to work against the set law. Morality indicates the relevant code of conduct about a certain aspect. It defines a particular religion or culture believes as good or bad. Religion is a group of people who follow a certain system of faith and worship. In addition, religious groups have common beliefs (Geyer and Roy 2). For example, Christians believe in living a faithful life to please their God. Religious leaders play a better to educate the members concerning what is bad or wrong. Therefore, there is a strong relationship