Therapist-client sex: Clients' retrospective reports.

Abstract

Therapists will be more effective practitioners when they understand the factors that contribute to sexual boundary violations. The authors' interviews with former victims indicated that offending therapists were mostly reputable psychologists working alone, and that boundary violations developed gradually. The clients were often victims of child sexual abuse. Many reported pleasurable feelings during the affair but saw the experience as hurtful or exploitative in retrospect. The authors' findings imply that practitioners should minimize seemingly innocuous physical consolation or self-disclosure, especially with survivors of child abuse. They are encouraged to select offices with other professionals and to participate in peer-supervision activities.

Constructions of Therapist-Client Sex: A Comparative Analysis of Retrospective Victim Reports

“…These results add to previous findings (Somer & Saadon, 1999) suggesting that clients may experience pleasurable feelings during sexual contacts with their psychotherapists. There are at least two possible interpretations for the seemingly high rate of TCS-Romance to TCS-Abuse accounts.…”

“…This practitioner argued that the only suffering that can result from therapist-patient sex, and the only reason why a patient might "complain against the previous mutual agreement to engage in sexual interaction that she negotiated with her therapist" (p. 81), were that the results did not meet "her self-imposed expectations" and her anger at the failure of the therapist to "satisfy her dreams of either marrying her or compensating her financially" (p. 82). Only few data exist to suggest that TCS clients may experience some positive feelings during the aberrant affair (e.g., Somer & Saadon, 1999). The literature on patient perceptions of TCS is very sparse and nothing is known on the exploited clients' constructions of the meaning of the relationship during TCS.…”

“…Others identified survivors of incest as at-risk of becoming TCS patients (Pope & Bouhoutsos, 1986;Somer, 1999). In a community study of Israeli women who reported sexual liaisons with their psychotherapists, Somer and Saadon (1999) found that some respondents reported pleasurable feelings during TCS, but saw the experience as hurtful or exploitative in retrospect. We embarked on the present study to enhance our understanding of cognitive and emotional processes associated with TCS from the perspective of former sexually exploited patients.…”

The aftermath of therapist–client sex: exploited women struggle with the consequences

“…Investigations on the clients' perspectives are sparse (e.g. Ditch & Avery, 2001;Somer & Saadon, 1999), and qualitative studies on developing emotional processes among survivors of TCS may not have been done. In fact, no such research has been identified by the authors of this study.…”

Advances in Dissociation Research and Practice in Israel

“…A number of quantitative studies have examined the role of peri-traumatic dissociation in the development of PTSD (e.g., Shalev, Freedman, Peri, Brandes, & Sahar, 1997;Shalev, Peri, & Canetti, 1996) and identified it as significantly predictive of PTSD symptomatology four months following exposure to the traumatic event (Freedman, Brandes, Peri, & Shalev, 1999). Several Israeli qualitative studies have shown that peri-traumatic dissociation plays an important role in the sexual victimization of female clients by their male psychotherapists (e.g., Ben Ari & Somer, 2004;Somer & Nachmani, in press;Somer & Saadon, 1999) and in the coping of emergency room social workers vicariously traumatized during terror attacks (Peled-Avram, Ben-Yizhack, Gagin, Somer, & Buchbinder, 2004;.…”