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Dear Editor,
I was both moved and relieved when I read “Too Close to Home: Countertransference Dynamics in the Wake of a Colleague's Sexual Boundary Violation” (18, no. 2, 225-247), by Shierry Weber Nicholsen. The author addresses an important point not generally discussed in explorations of sexual boundary violation: the repercussions on the colleagues and friends of the violating psychoanalyst.
Like Dr. Nicholsen, I was involved in the discovery of a previously respected colleague's sexual transgression with a patient. Similar to the situation with her patients, I had been seeing my patient “Adams,” who requested that I provide a referral for her partner “Burke.” I referred my Burke to my “Dr. Wagner” for analytic treatment. I continued to see Adams for another year or so, until she ended treatment. Approximately a year later, Adams contacted me and informed me that Burke was now involved in a romantic relationship with Dr. Wagner. Although my situation was different from Dr. Nicholsen's, in that I was required by state law to report Dr. Wagner, my feelings about this situation were and still are very similar.
I felt intensely ambivalent, agitated, and intimidated about reporting this colleague. Like Dr. Nicholsen, I wished that this weren't true, and even (in the service of denial and disavowal) went about trying to prove (or rather disprove) the facts in the matter. Even when the proof was clearly written in black and white (through my Internet research), I still couldn't fully believe it until Dr. Wagner's professional licence was revoked.
Dr. Nicholsen has listed in her paper many of the reasons for the persistence of my denial: my abrupt and traumatic de-idealization of Dr. Wagner; my humiliation at being taken for a fool (since I had referred Burke to Dr. Wagner); my recognition that I had been exploited for information about