SEXUAL ISSUES IN CLINICAL PRACTICE FORUM ARCHIVE
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Re:Advice on Counseling / Therapy
u · 09/11/01 at 6:15 ET
Of course the woman's health is of paramount importance. That is why pregnant women should consult their OBGYN.
For marital problems they consult counselors who study these matters, which are relationship problems in which the key concept is relationship. That means to treat relationships we must understand the complex interactions of the motives of both partners.
If relationship experts want to be dual expets in OBGYN they would be wise to be licensed in both marital counseling and OBGYN since there are lawyers as well as empirical researcher all about working daily to keeping us honest about what competencies we really do and do not have.
And there are other lawyers and a great many clients who just naturally have the unreasonable expectation that we should have have competencies that nobody on earth has.
It is very good to be clear and emphatic about what we do and do not really know. That's because it is good to practice defensively, which means not making claims to having confident knowlege that cannot be backed up by excellent reasoning or persuasive hard evidence.
When we're guessing and making the ordinary suppositions any layperson would probably make, we should be quite clear about this. But even this actually is not protection against the charge of making unwarrented professional claims. That's because when a professional gives only an opinion and even says that it is no better than a lay opinion, it is still regarded in some legal contexts as being a claim to expertise. So being careful to be sure to limit one's statements to what one knows or to saying when one is guessing or speculating theoreticlly are acutally not only intellectually honest habits; they are also a matter of prudent and shrewed practicality.
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