The New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute

Ethics at The New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute

The renown for clinical and educational excellence that The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute have long enjoyed is founded on their maintenance of the highest standards, both in the selection and training of Institute candidates and in the election of Society members. These standards have always been defined by their ethical dimensions.

The psychoanalytic endeavor builds upon the long-standing body of principles established by the healthcare professions, beginning with Hippocrates, for the benefit of the patient. The code of professional conduct of the well-trained psychoanalyst goes further, however, in asserting that the analyst’s adherence to the highest ethical standards is a necessary condition for the proper outcome of psychoanalytic therapy, as well as the advancement of the pedagogical and scientific goals of psychoanalysis.

The scientific, therapeutic, and ethical principles of psychoanalysis as taught to students at The New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and as practiced by the members of The New York Psychoanalytic Society, inform all aspects of the determination of treatment, therapeutic choice, and practical arrangements. Basic among these principles is the recognition by the analyst that the analyst-patient relationship becomes the vehicle for important feelings, thoughts, and beliefs, the proper handling of which – including the necessity for protecting the patient’s confidentiality – is essential to the therapeutic benefit of the psychoanalytic treatment. All candidates and members of The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute abide by the “Principles of Ethics for Psychoanalysts” of the American Psychoanalytic Association, in order to maintain the highest ethical and educational standards, in the interests not only of past, present, and future patients, but of the public, students, science, and the profession.