What is the connection between psychoanalysis and ethics? Freud’s official answer seems to have been that there is barely a connection at all: psychoanalysis is a ‘medical procedure’ which aims to cure neurosis, not to make people morally better. In this article, Edward Harcourt argues that, despite such pronouncements, psychoanalysis and ethics fundamentally belong to the same line of inquiry. Drawing on Aristotle’s view that ethics is not a set of frustrating do’s and don’ts as Freud believed but a way to perfect and realize our human natures, Harcourt argues that ethics and psychoanalysis, correctly conceived, are concerned with the same fundamental question: “How should I live?” Psychoanalysts face questions about patient confidentiality, for example, and these are ethical questions. But these are also questions faced by accountants and GPs. So if there’s no more to the connection between psychoanalysis and ethics than that, the connection doesn’t…
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