The Group as Complicit in Boundary Violations: Commentary on Dimen

In my thirty years of studying boundary violations in psychoanalysis, I have grown convinced that the approach to the problem is only partially addressed by exploring the individual issues in the analysts and the “fit” between analyst and patient in a particular dyad. Data of that kind are useful and can help us think about prevention at the level of the individual analyst. However, the analytic community's response to boundary violations has alerted me to the fact that there are powerful group forces operating, as Muriel Dimen has eloquently elaborated in her superb contribution to this literature. As she persuasively states, the discovery of a transgression evokes in others the unvoiced terror of being “outed” and consequently discredited for some secret personal truth of which they are ashamed. In my brief presentation I will draw heavily on Bion's ideas about groups as I share some of my observations as a consultant to analytic groups and as an evaluator and treater of individual analysts and patients who have been involved in sexual boundary violations.

There was once a deafening silence about the problem of sexual boundary violations in the psychoanalytic profession. In 1989 I served on the American Psychoanalytic Association Program Committee, and I proposed that we present a panel on the subject. I was told by a senior colleague that it wasn't necessary since “we already know all we need to know about the problem.” In May 1996 a COPE study group was organized within the association to study boundary violations in depth. Morris Peltz and I coauthored the first publication of that group (Gabbard and Peltz 2001). Its title, “Speaking the Unspeakable: Institutional Reactions