1. Ethics as a Psychotherapy Intervention – A Mechanism Unique to Animal-Assisted Psychotherapy (AAP)
Nancy Parish-Plass
“Ahava” Emergency Shelter for At-Risk Children, Kfar Bialik, Israel;
School of Social Work, Haifa University, Israel
AAP's ethics code is an especially complex one. The therapist must exhibit ethical behavior simultaneously towards the client, the animal, and what happens between them.
Psychotherapist
Client Animal
Unique to AAP is that not only is ethical behavior of the therapist an obligation, but it also serves as an intervention expanding the classic principles of psychotherapy and thus enriching and furthering the psychotherapy process.
INTERVENTION
The therapist’s ethical behavior towards the animal creates the sense that the therapist can be trusted.
Client identification with animals receiving ethical treatment
Recognizing and verbalizing the animal's feelings, desires, needs
Recognizing that within human-animal interactions, both human and animal are a separate individuals with their own perspectives; that interactions depend on mutual recognition
Moving back and forth between anthropomorphizing (for the sake of projection), or not (when there is a need to recognize reality for the animal’s welfare), in service of the psychotherapy process
De-objectification of animals in work with clients who have been objectified (as in the case of sexual abuse)
Recognition and discussion of the clash of needs between client and animal
EFFECT ON THE
THERAPY PROCESS
The development of the therapeutic alliance
Behavioral and cognitive change:
“I deserve to be treated ethically.”
Development of reflective functioning*
Mutuality and recognition of the existence of an "other“ in an interpersonal world
Helps the client navigate the
potential space between his/her inner world and outer reality
May help client understand how (s)he was objectified
These clashes may represent experiences in object relations from the past or present, particularly as may be relevant in parent-child therapy.*
Animal-Assisted Psychotherapy injects ethics-related concerns into the here and now of the therapy setting, where the above interventions may lead to increased psychological and social functioning and to working through related issues and processes, at a safe psychological distance, leading to insight and change.
*Shani-Kassif, L. (2016). Animal-assisted dyadic therapy: A therapy model promoting development of the reflective function in the parent-child bond. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Accepted for publication.