Sexual Exploitation in Professional Relationships

"Research suggests that as many as 10-20% of male therapists have transgressed the sexual boundaries of the therapeutic relationship. More than half of all therapists will encounter patients who have been sexually intimate with a previous therapist. Central to treating the victims of these exploitative encounters is an understanding of the subsequent emotional damage. Burdened by feelings of guilt, isolation, and suppressed rage, these victims, overwhelmingly women, are often at high risk for suicide. Often they return to therapy with an inability to trust. 'Sexual exploitation in professional relationships' considers prevalence data and clinical, ethical, and medicolegal issues that arise when sexual intimacy encroaches on a professional relationship. Supported by multidisciplinary contributors - psychiatrists, social workers, clergy, and attorneys - this volume explores the issue of professional incest across the broad spectrum of helping professions. Building on a psychoanalytic perspective of the dynamics of therapist-patient sex, this book puts forth clinical guidelines for understanding and treating both the victim and the offender. The "lovesick" therapist is illustrated in thoughtful detail as an emotionally dependent man, plagued by middle-age woes and excited by a flirtation with social proscription. The victim, is often cast in a role reversal as the healer, emerges emotionally labile, isolated, and sexually confused. Clearly denunciating sexual intimacy in professional relationships, editor Glen Gabbard, M.D. and the many additional contributors further consider the ethical and legal consequences of sexual intimacy after termination of treatment. Based on a thorough review of medicolegal cases and litigation, guidelines are recommended for both therapists and attorneys in assessing damage and screening victims. In an age when sexual exploitation cases are the leading cause of all professional practice litigation - an age when 87% of surveyed therapists acknowledge feeling sexually attracted to their patients - an informed professional community may be the best solution to this pervasive problem." -- book cover.