ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL DUTY OF A PSYCHIATRIST - CONFLICT AND INTERVENTION

The author draws attention to the chance and the challenge of the new law of psychiatric care adopted in Russia. For him it allows to humani ze psychiatric care as much as possible and to avoid those problems th at took place in Soviet psychiatry. In a historical and an ethical per spective he considers possible collusions that can arise in consequenc e of professional duty which strictly obliges a physician to implement law and ethic standards. Specially, he sees the psychiatrist standing in the field of tension between moral principle, law of the state and the economical difficulties of a society. The author comes to the con clusion that the implementation of the new Russian law of psychiatric care is extremely difficult. It requires that for the patients' benefi t the relationships between ethic standards and professional duty of t he psychiatrist are transferred out of conflict towards a sphere of in teraction.