Posted by fallsfall on February 1, 2004, at 13:22:32
In reply to Re: Dr. Bob, A special request?, posted by Dinah on February 1, 2004, at 12:47:38
I think that there are absolute boundaries for therapists (they shouldn't sleep with their clients). But inside those boundaries, I think that each therapist needs to establish their own boundaries - what they are comfortable sharing with their clients. This will differ from therapist to therapist, and probably between orientations, too. It may also shift for an individual therapist over the lifetime of their career.
Once the therapist is clear about his own general boundaries (i.e. will they be upset if a client drives past their house?), I think that they need to apply their knowledge of each individual client before making decisions on how they will act. A therapist may choose to be looser with their boundaries if they feel that a particular client (someone like Karen) might feel more trusting with more disclosure. The same therapist may choose to be stricter with their boundaries if they feel that the disclosure will be disconcerting to a different client (someone like Dinah).
I think that the profession has absolutes (i.e no sex). I think each therapist should know their own personal absolutes (For one, don't tell patients their marital, parental, sexual orientation status or age. For a different one, all of those may be OK to talk about, but they don't want to talk about things that happened in their childhood). Once those rules are established, I think that the therapists need to use their judgement every single day with every single patient to see if a particular response will be helpful to the client.
Since there are so many different kinds of clients, I'm glad there are different kinds of therapists. That lets each of us find a therapist who we can FIT well with - who will be best able to help us.
poster:fallsfall
thread:308062
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040131/msgs/308138.html