Posted by Dinah on October 11, 2003, at 11:08:39
In reply to Re: dealing with therapist's transgressions » fallsfall, posted by judy1 on October 11, 2003, at 10:56:15
Behaviors That Are Rare
One of the most surprising results was that only 1.9% of the respondents reported engaging in sexual contact with a client and that only 2.6% reported engaging in erotic activity (which may or may not involve actual contact) with a client. Previously, there have been three national surveys of sexual intimacies between psychologists and their patients. Holroyd and Brodsky (1977) reported 7.7% respondents "who answered positively any of the questions regarding erotic-contact behaviors or intercourse during treatment." Pope, Levenson, and Schover (1979) found that 7% of the therapists in their survey reported engaging in sexual contact with their clients. Pope et al. (1986) reported that 6.5% of their respondents acknowledged engaging in sexual intimacies with clients.It is difficult to explain the discrepancy between the current findings and those of the previous three studies. It may be that respondents are now less willing to admit, even on anonymous survey, to a behavior that is a felony in some states, or it may be that these findings are reflective of random sampling error or bias in return rate rather than of a change in behavior.
However, the current findings may indicate an actual decrease in the percentage of psychologists engaging in sexual intimacies with their patients. The increasing publicity given to the consequences of therapist-patient sexual involvment (Bouhoutsos, Holroyd, Lerman, Forer, & Greenberg, 1983; Feldman-Summers & Jones, 1984; Pope & Bouhoutsos, 1986), as well as the vivid first-person accounts of patients who have been sexually involved with their therapists (Freeman & Roy, 1976; Plaisil, 1985; Walker & Young, 1986), may be significantly altering the behavior of psychologists who are tempted in this area. For additional information on this topic, see Pope, Sonne, and Holroyd, 1993; Pope, 1994, 2000.
Some other items concerning sexual behaviors- such as nudity as part of therapy or using sexual surrogates with clients-also had extremely low rates. Engaging in sex with a clinical supervisee was reported by only 3.4% of the respondents. This figure corresponds closely to the 4.0% in a prior survey of APA Division 29 members who reported engaging in sexual intimacies with their clinical supervisees (Pope et al., 1979).
http://kspope.com/ethics/research4.php
poster:Dinah
thread:267788
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031011/msgs/268329.html