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The authors asked 2500 randomly chosen psychiatrists to evaluate their psychotherapeutic work using the Exploitation Index (Bull. Menning. Clin., 54:450-465.), to
determine whether it identifies a clinician's latent tendencies toward violation of the boundary between professional and personal relationships. Items were designed to elicit characteristics of one of four factors: erotic attitudes toward a patient, inappropriate friendliness, financial greed, and “enabling” a patient's pathological behavior. The overall response rate was 21.3%, lower than that of similar studies, but still appropriate for intensive statistical analysis. A majority reported that they and their patients addressed each other on a first name basis (56.5%); and a large majority reported accepting referrals from current or former patients (83.8%). These items proved to be invalid signals of exploitive attitudes. A third of the psychiatrists in this study found three or more items that alerted them to problematic activity of which they were formerly unaware, or that motivated them to change. The full questionnaire is appended to the article.