Puter tech, you said – “You took my original statement there, added something to it.” Yes dbs did, dbs added an opinion. You said – “I don’t know if the therapist intended to burden the client. To me it sounded more like the therapist intended to head off any burden that the client might feel from sensing a difference in the relationship. Again that is also an assumption though so I will simply stick to "we don’t know what the therapist intended." It does not matter what the therapists intent was. As I said in my other below response, any psychotherapist who has had six years or more of university training knows full well (or should) that a therapist should never ask the client to give something emotionally to the therapist. For a therapist to attempt to derive sympathy from a client in a therapeutic setting is a burden that the client does not deserve. I don’t think any psychologist or psychiatrist would dis agree with me on this point. If a social worker or psychotherapist does not realize that self disclosing something of that nature could be harmful to a client, in my own humble opinion, it would be clearly unethical. And if the therapist DID realize it was harmful, it would still be unethical. Whether or not the therapist knew harm would come, it is the therapists responsibility to not burden the client with therapist personal crises. When a person breaks a rule, the rule is still broken whether or not the therapist knew there was a rule. If I get a speeding ticket for speeding, I am still responsible for it, whether or not I saw a speed limit sign. You say – “If the therapist simply misjudged what this client needed given the current situation then its quite possible things can be worked out in a good way.” Maybe, maybe not. Again, regardless of intent, it is clearly unethical for any psychotherapist to set up a situation in which the end result is an extracton of sympathy from a client or is an emotional burden to a client with potentially harmful personal crises information going on in the therapist's life. It is selfish, potentially destructive and wrong. Destructive to the threaputic relationship. Look at the original post in this thread and you will clearly see. You say – “If the therapist aimed to lay her personal problems on the client then that’s not ethical of course.“ Again intent here does not matter. If it did, then any psychotherapist could say “hey I did not know this would hurt the client” and any therapist would have free reign to use harmful therapy techniques and if called on the ethical carpet, they could exonerate themselves simply by saying, for example in the Colorado rebirthing case a few years ago, that "they did not know that our suffocating re-birthing therapy would suffocate your teen aged child". Or to extend it to society, any person could break any law and then exhonerate her or himself just by saying something like, "hey I did not know that robbing this person would harm her." You have to draw the line somewhere, that's why there are codes of ethics. That would be akin to an MD saying, something like, "hey I did not know it would hurt my patient if I sewed the sponge up inside his stomach." Even if the MD did not know it would hurt the client, the MD is still responsible. It’s the psychotherapist’s responsibility to know to not self disclose existing, current personal crises therapist is going through. Therapist needs to bring that up with either a mentor, associate, etc. Not a client. This is all very very basic psychotherapy ethics. You say – “Let me add on a personal note that in the beginning my therapist told me nothing about herself and where she was currently at. Unfortunately for that kind of relationship I was way more perceptive than that and I pretty much always sensed it when something was up for her. Now we head off any misunderstandings with her giving me the basics of some things when needed.” I am very glad it worked out for you personally and wish you the best.
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