Postanalytic Contacts in Institutes

February 4, 2004. Howard Levine and Judith Yanof, members of the COPE Study Group on Boundary Violations, in the second paper from this group ( “Boundaries and Postanalytic Contacts in Institutes,”  JAPA  52/3)↗, focus on the possible ethical violations involved in post-termination contact after a training analysis.1 The authors’ consideration of possible ethical violations, unfortunately, is not embedded in the larger context of the complex clinical conceptions of the nature of post-termination contact. As a result, they fail to consider that their focused concern about possible ethical violations carries inappropriate, negative implications for the totality of clinical concerns in regard to such contact. Thus, their emphasis on a variety of serious risks implies that clinical participation in post-termination contact is a dangerous enterprise that may well place the analyst at risk for ethical violations and the patient at risk for exploitation. This implication, again, stems from their failure to consider the clinical nature and complexity of post-termination contact, including both the possibility that the absence of such contact may have deleterious effects on the former patient, analyst or nonanalyst, and that the presence of such contact may have substantial benefits.

The members of the study group, though geographically diverse, derive their psychoanalytic homogeneity from their selection by the chair of BOPS, which requires that they be certified and training analysts. One officer of BOPS commented that “comfortable” committees— shared views—are the most productive. The study group's shared, traditional point of view may additionally and inadvertently have been protected by the group process of avoiding, or at least not seeking, exposure to conflicting ideas. This conjecture is based on the fact that during the three years the study group was discussing post-termination contact , I conducted clinical discussion groups on that subject at each of the semiannual me