Topics Ethics

Question I recently ended a romance with a man, when he told me that several months ago he'd secured the services of a psychiatrist-friend of his, whom he'd asked to come to his home for the express purpose of listening-in on a 2-hour phone conversation with me. The listening-in occurred completely without my knowledge. My ex told me that he wanted his psychiatrist-friend's input because he didn't trust me at the time. What are the ethics of this sort of spying, if spying's what it can be called? Does it make any difference that my ex is a retired Professor of Philosophy/Ethics? Thank you for your consideration.

Accepted:
December 27, 2005

Comments

I don't think "spying" is the word. I would say that both your ex and his friend violated your privacy -- the former by inviting a stranger to witness a conversation you had reason to regard as personal and private between him and yourself, and the latter by accepting this invitation. What they did is presumptively wrong in the same way (though not to the same degree) as that psychiatrist watching, by invitation of your ex, a romantic encounter between you and your ex.

The presumption that what they did is wrong can be overcome in various ways. The most obvious is consent. Had you consented to the psychiatrist listening in, then neither of them would have done anything wrong. Since you did not know about the listening in, you obviously had not consented to it.

The presumption could also be overcome by prior wrong conduct of yours. Your ex claims that he did not trust you at the time. If you were doing wrong to him at or before that time, and if he had solid reason to suspect this, then he could have been justified in doing what he did -- especially when doing so could help protect him from harm due to your wrong conduct, and provided it was a proportionate response to what you had done to him.

From what you write, I gather that he may have thought, erroneously, that he was justified in this way. If so, his conduct was in fact unjustified but perhaps excusable. This may be worth thinking about: Did he have solid reason to suspect you of wronging him? Was his response proportionate to the wrong he suspected? Was the presence of the psychiatrist a plausible way for him to protect himself from harms he feared from your suspected wrong conduct? If the answer to at least the first two questions is yes, then his conduct may well have been morally excusable. If it was, you have reason to accept his apology, ... but you may still want to keep your distance.

Even if your ex acted wrongly in a way that is not excusable, his friend's conduct may have been justified or excusable, depending on what sort of dramatic "information" your ex may have made credible to her or him about you and about his own mental state. The psychiatrist may have thought that s/he was cooperating in a project of justified defense against your wrongdoing.

Finally, does it make a difference that your ex is a retired Professor of Philosophy/Ethics? Only insofar as we would not easily accept from him a plea of moral ignorance or error.