The Borderlines of Psychology

What does it mean to be a psychologist? It once meant that you completed specified training, and that you practised in a specific manner. Soon, it will also mean certain things about you as a person.

Photo by David Rotimi on Unsplash

The Psychology Board of Australia is responsible for regulating the professional activities of anyone using the label “Psychologist”. It declared that it would, in December 2025, dispense with the Code of Ethics that has guided the practice of psychology in Australia thus far, in favour of a new Code of Conduct. This shift in title of the two Codes is not immaterial. Many people were consulted on the draft of this new Code, and (temporally) last among these were the psychologists themselves. Psychologists have responded to this decisive correction in the trajectory of their profession in various ways, and their reactions can trace their relative investment in issues including autonomy, responsibility, compliance, duty, and open-mindedness. Many are posting on social media their anguish over whether they can remain in the redefined profession, or whether the profession they devoted themselves to is no longer called psychology. I claim that these dilemmas speak to very important ethical concerns: the Human Rights of Free Speech and the Right to a Private Life. In this essay I will speak to the ethical significance of the introduction of a Code of Conduct, and to the impact of this particular one on the question of conformity versus freedom of thought and speech, and (first) the question of the private life of the psychologist. This is not an exhaustive analysis of the Code.

The Right to a Private Life

Does a psychologist need a private life? And if she had one, would it be relevant to her job? Within the profession, there is debate about the relevance of the personhood of the psychotherapist. Whereas some insist that psychology itself, not the psychologist, is the active ingredient in the treatment, others claim that the person of the psychologist is never irrelevant and may yet be decisive. Are our patients healed by us, or by the therapy, or by an interaction of both?

Outside the profession, the personal life of the psychologist has important political significance. Irrespective of the therapeutic impact of the specific person of the psychologist, there remains the question of that psychologist’s Right to a Private Life, like that of any other citizen. Should a psychologist’s private life become the stuff of regulatory agencies, or rules of professional conduct? Does becoming a psychologist mean surrendering some autonomy over one’s private life?

The new Code of Conduct states that a number of specifically private things about a psychologist are now to be policed and regulated, making the choice to pursue the profession of psychologist consequential for one’s status as a citizen. Section 4.8 “Boundaries” make a clear separation between what is relevant to service provision versus “personal views, feelings and relationships” (sic; Oxford comma). However, by Section 8.4, “statements intended to be private” are scooped-up and included in the dicta on “making public statements of any kind”: a connection resting entirely on the premise that “statements intended to be private could become public” (italics mine). At first blush this may seem reasonable. But in practice, a channel is thus created for private statements to become relevant to one’s professional conduct (and other information on the Board’s website offers telling examples). When the Code declares restrictions on the contents of “private” social media posts (on the grounds that they “may” become public), a unique political situation has arrived. If you work as a psychologist, you lose the right to author your private social media as you please, because constraints now apply. Again, the Code mentions the important distinction between private and professional online statements, but instead of encouraging the distinction between the two, it states that confusion of the two by the public is to be accommodated instead of corrected: Private statements “may” be made public in the future, so they are all to be considered de facto professional public statements, and these statements must conform to professional standards. Imagine. On a related page on the AHPRA Website, the guidelines on the subject include the following sentence:

QUOTE: “While you may hold personal beliefs about the efficacy or safety of some public health initiatives, you must make sure that any comments you make on social media are consistent with the codes, standards and guidelines of your profession and do not contradict or counter public health campaigns or messaging.”

The last subordinate clause is crux, and difficult to believe when paused over: Psychologists may not criticise or disagree with public health campaigns or messaging. Why ever not? Apparently, psychologists must now maintain (even in private posts) that “public health campaigns” are a priori beyond question. Would not the critique by educated and competent practitioners be in the public interest? Aren’t psychologists obliged professionally to occupy evidence-based positions on such matters, rather than ex cathedra positions on the edicts of Governmental agencies who may themselves claim positions on the evidence? Potentially chilling, and yet other formerly-private matters must also be surrendered to the profession.

One of the most alarming example is that the new Code of Conduct contains the word “immunisation”. Since covid, many people are sensitive to arguments about the value, efficacy, or consequences of immunisation; but my point here has nothing to do with any of these debates. (I could make my same point equally by suggesting we imagine it had instead contained the word “colonoscopy”.) Rather, I wish to draw attention to the significance of mentioning this topic in a Code of professional Conduct for psychologists. Psychologists have, by definition, no training in medicine; it is unethical for them to promulgate professionally any position on health or medical treatments; they may only direct clients to relevant medical practitioners to solicit opinions. So if the psychologist’s opinion on or understanding of the subject of immunisation cannot ethically belong to his professional sphere, then the very mention of the word in the Code demonstrates the intrusion of the professional governing body into the psychologist’s private life, private health care, and the psychologist’s personal (non-professional) opinions. It appears in Section 9.1 “Your health and wellbeing”, which includes comment on how the psychologist pursues his/her own healthcare. So if I were a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and also a psychologist, my registration as a psychologist applies pressure on the type of medical treatment I choose for myself, based on my own training, expertise, and—most importantly—preference. The subsequent Section outlines obligations regarding the health and wellbeing of other practitioners. The circles of autonomous governance of one’s own health and wellbeing shrink.

Summary

Scholars ignore ad hominem critiques, because they encourage false inferences about competence beyond the parameters of what is demonstrable (e.g., “don’t go to Dr Smith for your root canal, because she posted on Instagram that she is in favour of restricting immigration”). And perhaps worse, it depletes the basic human right of that psychologist to her own Private Life. Once the private life of a psychologist should become publicly relevant, or legislatively relevant, an important human right of that psychologist becomes restricted or compromised, because it obtains that only certain types of person with certain types of beliefs are permitted to become (or remain) psychologists. The corresponding right to be educated and recognised as a psychologist without prejudice is gone, because only certain people can be psychologists.

The Right to Free Speech

The aforementioned contain aspects of intrusion into private life and restrictions on free speech, both public and private. Much is at risk. Protecting the right of free speech is protecting a central means for positive influence among citizens, inside and outside of the specific practice of clinical psychology. Free speech permits and fosters discussion, debate, and deliberation, all of which preserve the option that people change their minds willingly, if convinced by the opinions of others, and arrive at new and different conclusions. This kind of convincing and unforced change is not dissimilar to the therapeutic change all psychologists would hope for their patients: Conference breeds development. But not all conclusions are arrived at through the process of being sincerely convinced. The authority of institutions looms.

Institutions can enshrine values that foster free speech, debate, and deliberation; or they can enshrine the reverse. For example, one traditional distinction between religion and science is that science espouses the values of debate and skepticism, and it eschews authority as a path to conviction. We are taught not to care about the opinion of the researcher, only to care about the evidence and conclusions of his research. On the contrary, religion may foreclose debate by reference to (divine) authority of speech. Values for or against free speech have greater consequences than values for or against other kinds of permissiveness, because the value of free speech always implies a different trajectory into the future for the activity in question. For example, the staff of a commercial news company might endorse right-wing political values, but if it selectively edits copy for political consonance, the consequences affect the very function of a Free Press. We lose printed debate and information from which the reader might draw conclusions, and we are left with statements of particular conclusions only. We might fear for the readership, but we should also fear for the journalists who are now fated to become evangelists. Alternate points of view are never printed (unless in mockery), and so the company’s values would thus constrict true debate per se. It’s the editing, not the contents of the political position that lead to the problem. This loss of debate follows whenever an institution’s ‘values’ consist of ethical conclusions. In such a farrago, we don’t value the debate of politics per se, we value one predefined political position, which should properly be arrived at as a result of debate, not instead of debate. The hierarchical distinction between the debate and conclusion is paramount. What will happen to the clinical practice of psychology, if its institutions enshrine ethical conclusions?

Clinical ethics, and ethics more broadly, demand case-by-case deliberation before arriving at a conclusion (however temporary)¹. On the question of ethical conclusions, we must distinguish between i) the ethical principles that guide discussion and deliberation, and ii) the ethical conclusions themselves that are arrived at by case-specific reference to principles². Ethical conclusions cannot be pre-fabricated, but when an institution enshrines specific conduct itself (instead of enshrining ethical principles), it risks the foreclosure of deliberation and risks enforcing a narrow approach to an otherwise complex endeavour—a dream to many, but a nightmare to others. And if the values of large institutions change over time, clearly—and suddenly—it can redraw the boundaries of membership, changing who is in and who is out. Your dream profession can turn into a nightmare.

The introduction of a Code of Conduct, implies that ethical practice is so identifiable a priori that it can be codified and even replace a Code of Ethics, which was organised by principles. Now psychologists can be told which clinical behaviours are ethical (and which unethical) in advance. If one’s ultimate post-deliberation conduct were to be chartered, then being a registered psychologist would come to mean agreeing to deemphasise idiosyncratic, case-by-case deliberation itself. The Board would already know (and be happy to tell you) how to behave. The inherent problem of outlining ethical conclusions instead of principles is evidenced in the new Code’s fuzzy positions in some of its statements, which open with absolute declarations about behaviour and end with the provision for exceptions if the exception be defensible professionally. What possible value as a guideline for behaviour could these statements offer?

A more-troubling aspect of this transition was the fact that many psychologists welcomed it in a way that saw the primary issue with a new Code to be one of compliance. One colleague posted on LinkedIn, shortly after the new Code of Conduct was confirmed, a statement of the futility of disagreement. We should hear him in full:

QUOTE: “Over the next year we will hear a bunch of complaints and things that ppl don’t like about the code. But it’s done, it now represents our professions and will do for at least 5 years probably more like ten. It’s going to be a case of - learn it, love it, live it or leave.”

Much can be said about this single post; it communicates volumes about the author’s attitude to his colleagues and to ethical conduct itself. He demonstrates masterfully Kohlberg’s lowest levels of Moral Development: “Dad has told us what’s right, so our only job now is to obey; stop even trying to disagree”. His position is obsequious towards the Board and alarmingly condescending towards his colleagues: too bad if ppl (colleagues) don’t like things about it, they have to love it or leave. The very idea that a Government department define the conduct of psychologists, to psychologists themselves, is already fundamentally flawed. Psychologists are already practising psychology, by definition; yet here is a new definition of what psychology is and how psychology is to be practised. The Board did not ask psychologists how successfully the profession was reflected in the existing Code, and whether the practitioners believed it should be amended; they delivered an amended Code and asked the psychologists whether they had any notes. That same colleague quoted above now offers courses to familiarise psychologists with the new Code, which enforces the idea that any discrepancy between current practice and the Code must be corrected in the direction of the Code. Psychologists were at once i) the last group consulted in the drafting of the new Code, and ii) the only group required to adhere to the final version. For our LinkedIn contributor to anticipate complaints is to say that psychologists simply don’t agree that the codified behaviour is (or should be) the practice of psychology. But he infers that the new definition is a priori right and the psychologists themselves are wrong about what their own profession is. What is his suggestion to psychologists who already have a different definition of their life’s work? A statement of the assertion of authority: “Love it or leave”.

I left.

In my own case, I had many reasons for quitting my registration, each of significant personal importance to me, but they all had in common a disjuncture with the declared simple declarations of correct behaviour that the profession seems to be moving further towards over time. I realised that I was (literally) paying to give them the right to apply their definitions to the evaluation of my own practice—definitions I already disagreed with on so many counts. They hold the power legally to define psychology, so by (their) definition, I was no longer a psychologist. All that remained was to spend my annual dues on something else. Our colleague’s LinkedIn comment demonstrates a troubling lack of care for what it means that I and his other colleagues might disagree with the new Code. What mattered to him was accepting it, not evaluating or questioning it. But this idea of rushing past deliberation to declare allegiance was also troublingly present among other colleagues too, a few years earlier, during the pandemic.

Psychologists in Brisbane during Covid posted on a Clinical Psychology forum how they felt about the prospect of treating unvaccinated patients in vivo in their practices. Their chief fear was not that they would contract that virus, but rather that they would be sued by other (presumably) vaccinated patients, if such patients caught the virus and then tried to claim they could trace their infection to their psychologist’s waiting room. A tall order to anyone who has even basic understanding of contagion or vaccination (or suing) but one made truly ridiculous when coupled with the idea that contagion would be traceable to unvaccinated fellow-patients, and further, that the responsibility would be shifted to the psychologist who had permitted their entry into the waiting room. It was among the many madnesses of well-educated people during that time. As professionals who avowed evidence-based approaches to practice, these psychologists evinced a lack of faith in the immunity that vaccines offered them (and their patients), but they also showed a troubling lack of faith in their ability to handle ethical complexity. Finally one colleague demonstrated the most profound abdication of ethical responsibility by posting that s/he wished the Government would issue a by-law, so that psychologists didn’t have to work out for themselves a position on admitting unvaccinated patients. It was a plea to be told what to do, to avoid having to arrive at a conclusion by careful and complicated deliberation. One psychoanalytic colleague of mine asserted, in response, that this disturbing lack of presence should render such a person unfit for the profession itself. Clinical psychology is simply incompatible with a preference not to consider, to debate, and to deliberate. As with any scientific practice, conviction is for religion, scientists worry and disagree with each other.

We should pity that poor colleague, because this especially revolting moment could only have occurred when a Government is both responsible for instructing psychologists and empowered to reprimand them for their (mis-)conduct. And when psychologists fear reprimand, it’s difficult to distinguish between a consensus of values versus a conformity born of sheer fear. It was, at the very least, an abdication of responsibility at the most elementary level. And as outlined above, psychologists can now become public (and private) mouthpieces for Government values and policies, on pain of losing their registration (read income). The possibility of disagreement (publicly or privately) is now a threat to registration.

The need for uncertainty in ethics

So what of the need for deliberation in clinical practice? Over time, the requirements both to qualify as a psychologist and the requirements for ongoing professional development (to remain a psychologist) have increased substantially. Psychologists have never had to be so educated, in time to have the requirement of clinical judgement become so less relevant. Psychoanalytic practice (in particular) simply cannot do without worry and uncertainty. Fundamental to the practice of the psychoanalytic therapies is the idea that things are never as simple as they first seem. To posit an unconscious is to assert that other (decisive) meanings are always at play, hidden behind positions of reasonable (and unreasonable) explanations for the status quo. We help our patients find parts of themselves operating in the background but not consonant with their conscious account of themselves and their experience. This openness to uncertainty and determination to leave things open for other explanations is the cornerstone of expanding awareness and the clinical counterpart to the discussion and deliberation that leads citizens to change their minds. Therapists offer alternative explanations (based on the clinical data and the lenses of theories) and leave their patients with the option to change their minds in response.

And while other specific therapeutic interventions are defined a priori as admissible or not, the supraordinate problem is one of constricted options to consider what is and is not therapeutically potent, and therefore, by definition, what is truly ethical. When I completed my psychology training, the emphasis lay on principles, specifically the principles of the scientist-practitioner model. This model gave a framework for clinical practice that introduced scientific curiosity and “testing” into the consulting room. Now it seems that the emphasis in the profession in on compliance with declared positions on practice. I have outline how this can be seen as seriously problematic for psychologists, but also touched on the special significance of these issues for psychologists working psychoanalytically. An investigative non-foreclosing stance is indispensable in psychoanalytic therapy. Psychoanalysis was born in psychiatry, but the two have since developed and trailed off in completely different (and non-overlapping) epistemological directions. Perhaps we have likewise seen the last moment of real contact in Australia between psychoanalysis and psychology.

Giac Giacomantonio, Ph.D.

1. Despite hopes to the contrary, we must concede that answers to ethical dilemmas are not universally accepted, not consistently recognised: The example of the famous trolley problem sees research participants give different answers to the same problem contingent on circumstance (including whether asked before or after a meal). So the dream of consensus and guidelines is difficult to preserve; we are forced to reassess every single instance.

2. To turn again to the trolley problem, an ethical principle might be “effect the greatest good for the greatest number,” whereas a conclusion might be “always kill one person to save three.”