. . . if a person came up to you at a party and said,
“Oh, you must be Anna’s friend Clarissa! I heard so much about you that I recognized you immediately. Anna and I always talk about you at length. By the way, I’m her psychotherapist.”
For some reason, I felt extremely uncomfortable and did all I could to avoid this person until the end of the party.
Clarissa's Blog 
Wow. That’s awful. And it’s so unethical on the part of the therapist!
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Doesn’t that violate confidentiality?
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He didn’t say what she told him about me. Just that I was discussed. At length.
The therapist was quite tipsy, I might add.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people going into therapy. But this was an uncomfortable situation.
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It’s still a breach in confidence for her, and a sort of violation of privacy for you. I can see how it would be very uncomfortable. Tipsiness doesn’t excuse it.
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Wow. Boundary issues much?
(Him, not you!)
This would be the kind of situation where I would be agonizing over whether to tell my friend about the encounter. I know I would want to know if MY therapist were this unprofessional/incompetent/asshatty.
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Aren’t you supposed to not invite therapists to your parties? Aren’t they supposed to turn you down if you do?
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I honestly don’t know. He is a friend of the family, though.
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I think that means he shouldn’t be her therapist.
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I disagree. Having grown up in a culture of considering one’s parent’s second cousins ‘immediate family’, I have always had a choice of different people who know me and my life to talk to, regularly, about my problems. Therefore I find the idea of talking to a ‘trained professional’, who is a stranger and knows nothing about me or where I’m coming from and will only ‘analyse’ my problems on a generalised rubric, utterly ridiculous, irrational, unproductive, and therefore a waste of my time. My idea of the best therapist is someone who is trained, AND a friend of the family or a relative.
The problem is with him/her telling Clarissa she was discussed, not her/his social relationship with Anna. Then again, Clarissa, did he/she say you were discussed during sessions? As a friend, she/he may have discussed you with Anna socially.
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I once read an internet post, which connects between talking to a ‘trained professional’ approach and the way friendship became more scarce (in the writer’s mind, at least), thus the idea f.e. that one shouldn’t burden friends with one’s psychological problems, but pay money to a stranger instead. One more area of life, which got capitalistic principles applied to it.
Personally I, like you, have great relatives, even if they’re very few in number unlike your extended family, and in case of problems would go to them for advice and support. At least, I hope nothing horrible will happen in my life to persuade me otherwise.
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Psychological problems are created in one’s very early childhood when the only people you are surrounded with are your relatives. Can you guess who causes these psychological problems? 🙂
You can’t really go to a person who created the issue (probably completely inadvertently) and ask them to remove it.
Resolving psychological issues with friends makes just as much sense as asking a friend who is not a dentist to do your root canal. We go to trained professionals even with minor health issues. How come it is OK to entrust your psyche to amateurs??
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Good answer. That having been said, a good therapist is hard to find. I think Rimi’s description is a bit of a caricature, but I do take her point.
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The problem with an analyst knowing your relatives is that s/he will not be able to address your psychological truth but will rather proceed from the basis of their own psychological truth.
Even surgeons refuse to operate on people they are close to.
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I agree completely.
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Wow! First, the therapist has no ethical principles whatsoever, and I agree with Pen that he was violating the patient/doctor confidentiality. But, you said he is a family friend, so that changes the situation. Then I thought about your friend, was she to blame? Probably not… or yes? I’ve never been to a therapist but, I think I would try to hide friends personalities by not giving unnecessary details that would not give away my friends, just in case. I bet that was a hard one for you in this sense, wasn’t it?
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All you have to go on is what the person said. a) you are discussed at length; b) he’s her psychotherapist.
In that role, the message he delivered is inappropriate and unprofessional.
Now, maybe he is also a friend and she often mentions you – but that’s not at all clear here. Also, “she often mentions you” and “you are discussed at length” are two entirely different messages.
Even if what he was trying to say was innocuous, a professional should have a better way of communicating it, so as not to cause discomfort.
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ummm what was her shrink doing at her party? Holy dual relationship. A person’s individual preferences not withstanding, ethical professional standards in the U.S. clearly preclude personal relationships between practitioners of all sorts, lawyers, doctors, teachers and yes shrinks (which I’m all for as well) for precisely the reason Clarissa was weirded out.
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If this person were a psychoanalyst, then I know for a fact he couldn’t have been a family friend. With therapists, though, I’m not sure. I would definitely not go to a therapist who is so close to the family (or even acquainted in any way) because that would defeat the purpose of therapy for me. But this must be some very different branch of therapy.
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It is unethical in any case.
If it is dangerous (for a client) or not depends on the nature of the therapy. Analysis implies that client has unfounded projections on the analyst. So the client has to know as little as possible about the analyst to be sure that those projections are indeed unfounded.
The same is true with any other therapist as well (client tries to create the same dynamics with the therapist as with everybody else in his/her life), but other therapists have other techniques besides analyzing client’s unfounded projections.
I guess the only case when social interaction with the therapist does not really matter is when the only purpose of the therapy is for a client to unload his/her troubles without actually wanting to change anything, and the only thing the therapist offers is some sort of safety/security/unconditional acceptance. (Anna supposed chatting about Clarissa in her sessions seems to be in line with this particular vision. How central interaction with Clarissa is in Anna’s life?)
Otherwise the therapist may need to confront the client from time time, which may not be easy to do if the client is therapist’s friend or relative…
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I thought it wasn’t that central, which is why I’m now kind of disturbed.
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Freud notoriously analyzed his own daughter Anna. A bad idea then, and now. A therapist should not even mention that relationship to a third party.
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Clarissa, I actually had the reverse happen, realized that the psychoanalyst that my dear friend’s husband suggested for me (he is also analyst) was involved with people I know in a social movement organization back in the day. I kept wracking my memory to determine if I’d ever discussed them. I kind of think I may have but only in a positive way. My analyst was the classic blank screen so she didn’t react at all.
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a therapist identifying anyone as their patient/client is a violation of confidentiality, which is unprofessional and unethical, and can result in loss of licensure.
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