“How Could This Happen to Me?”: Sexual Misconduct and us

This could never happen to me.” We have often heard this phrase repeated in informal discussions about sexual misconduct. And yet violation of professional boundaries has been a persistent concern from the early history of psychoanalytic practice to our most current interactions. Far from being a transgression of an isolated few, it is a pervasive presence in our practice today. As Gabbard (1995) suggests:

It would be tempting for us to attribute these transgressions to a small handful of corrupt colleagues who suffer from severe character pathology and a propensity to act rather than reflect. This point of view allows all of us to projectively disavow our own vulnerability to boundary violations and see them as the province of a few who have nothing in common with the rest of us. The facts are otherwise. In my experience … it has become increasingly clear that all of us are potentially vulnerable…. Rather than condemn and moralize about our impaired colleagues, we need to acknowledge and examine our universal vulnerability that is inextricably linked to the psychoanalytic enterprise [pp. 1116-1117].

Joan Wheelis introduced the panel by noting that sexual misconduct has typically been investigated by examining the crucial differences between the practice of such transgressors and “good” clinical practice. The distance that such differentiation affords allows us to believe that we have immunity from the folly and error of those who transgress, a belief that precludes consideration of the very concerns