Sexual Boundary Violations

This book addresses training, supervisory, and therapeutic issues related to the consequences from sexual boundary violations among mental health professionals and clergy. These problems are discussed on theoretical and practical levels aimed at understanding, recovery, rehabi...

This book explains how sexual boundary violations occur in psychotherapy, how to avoid them, and how such violations affect clients, therapists, colleagues, institutions, and families.

Sexual boundary violations are considered the most serious ethical infractions in the mental health profession, as well as in higher education and pastoral counseling. Recognized as unethical due to the power imbalance inherent in the structure of the therapist-patient and teacher-student dyads, erotic contact between therapists and patients has been revealed in prevalence studies to occur at an unacceptably high incidence rate (nine to twelve percent) among mental health practitioners. There exist few programs, teaching methods, and preventative measures that adequately address the problem of sexual boundary violations, despite the fact that discussing this problem openly is no longer taboo. Sexual Boundary Violations addresses this gap, providing educators, trainers, and clinicians with a resource to aid in developing programs, ethics workshops, seminars, and other educative or clinical teaching projects.

What do you do when you run into a patient in a public place? How do you respond when a patient suddenly hugs you at the end of a session? Do you accept a gift that a patient brings to make up for causing you some inconvenience? Questions like these—which virtually all clinicians face at one time or another—have serious clinical, ethical, and legal implications. This authoritative, practical book uses compelling case vignettes to show how a wide range of boundary questions arise and can be responsibly resolved as part of the process of therapy. Coverage includes role reversal, gifts, self-disclosure, out-of-office encounters, physical contact, and sexual misconduct. Strategies for preventing boundary violations and managing associated legal risks are highlighted.

The availability of practical applications, techniques, and case studies by international therapists is limited despite expansions to the fields of clinical psychology, rehabilitation, and counseling. As dialogues surrounding mental health grow, it is important to maintain therapeutic modalities that ensure the highest level of patient-centered rehabilitation and care are met across global networks. Research Anthology on Rehabilitation Practices and Therapy is a vital reference source that examines the latest scholarly material on trends and techniques in counseling and therapy and provides innovative insights into contemporary and future issues within the field. Highlighting a range of topics such as psychotherapy, anger management, and psychodynamics, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for mental health professionals, counselors, therapists, clinical psychologists, sociologists, social workers, researchers, students, and social science academicians seeking coverage on significant advances in rehabilitation and therapy.

Preceded by Boundaries and boundary violations in psychoanalysis / Glen O. Gabbard, Eva P. Lester. New York: BasicBooks, c1995.

This important new work covers clinical issues in treating victims of school violence and assessing children with the potential for violence. The editor also examines the effectiveness of prevention intervention programs and offers larger policy recommendations. The book looks at environmental factors such as cultural issues on behaviors from bullying to mass school shootings. And uniquely, the book delves into topics such as sexual boundaries and body image. In all, this book aims for a theoretical and applied picture of the current state of school violence and prevention.

In this acclaimed volume, authors Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., and Eva P. Lester, M.D., shed light on the many controversies surrounding boundary issues and equip readers with strategies for recognizing and dealing with boundary problems on the part of clinicians and patients.