Posted by lcat10 on February 6, 2007, at 22:39:10
In reply to Re: Disgusted with therapist boundary violaters, posted by Honore on February 6, 2007, at 10:48:19
> Nothing that we say will break up a patients' relationship with a T-- because the ties that hold people together IRL are so much stronger than any outside can imagine.
>
> I see that often with friends-- and myself-- when I've been in destructive relationships. The compulsion of the connection overwhelms even my own reason about how destructive it is and how much I need to get away.
>
> It is good for us to say, perhaps as dispassionately as we can, to those who are caught in these snares, that we do understand, but that their Ts are behaving unethically, no matter how much in love they may feel that they are.
>
> Glen Gabbard, a well-known psychoanalyst, has written authoritatively on this subject and I"ll try to find one or two of his papers.
>
> Honore
Yes; Glen Gabbard has written on the subject. I used to work with him at Menninger's when they were still in Topeka, Kansas. It is not unusual for patients to want to think they want to sleep with their therapist. It is something to be understood, not acted on by a therapist.There is no excuse in my book for a therapist to violate boundaries. If it is occuring, then the therapist needs to go get help for himself or herself. The power differential makes it impossible in my book for there ever to be an "equal" relationship. It did not start out that way, and will never be.
poster:lcat10
thread:730229
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070203/msgs/730653.html