Why psychotherapy must exchange personal values for functional virtues

Contemporary psychotherapy often anchors its practice to the shifting sands of subjective experience. This foregrounds values in an already politically homogenous field, which inadvertently systematises bias in training and practice. Postmodern and constructivist zeitgeists encourage this drift; such influences distance the discipline from its objective and scientific foundations. I propose that we must exchange nebulous personal values for a rigorous, functional conception of virtue to preserve the integrity of the clinical field. By normatively extending Skinner’s taxonomy of behavioural selection, I distinguish the biological “is” of our phylogenetic inheritance from the functional “oughts” which direct and indirect environments impose, per the Cultivating Individual Virtue In Context (CIVIC) model. When applied to psychotherapy, this framework offers a normatively bounded basis for flourishing that remains externally evaluable while nonetheless preserving self-determination. This ensures that clinical practice remains a truth-oriented applied science which recognises that not all values are equally conducive to flourishing.