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The subject of sexual exploitation in professional relationships, like that of sexual abuse in general, has received considerable attention in the last decade. Sexual Exploitation in Professional Relationships, while focusing primarily on the mental health professions, also explores the problem as it appears in other professional relationships, including those between teacher and student, clergyman and parishioner, and lawyer and client.
The book is a series of essays in two parts. The first part discusses various topics related to therapist-patient sex: surveys among psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to determine the frequency of sexual contact with patients in the different professions, as well as attitudes toward such contact; psychoanalytic perspectives on the “lovesick” therapist (p. 72) and on the women who are most susceptible to sexual relationships with therapists (the surveys show that most offenders are male—indeed, the low incidence of such abuse among social workers is attributed in part to the fact that social work, unlike psychiatry and psychology, has until recently been a predominantly female profession [pp. 32-33]); guidelines for clinicians or attorneys assessing the major symptoms that characterize victims of therapist—patient sex; treatment approaches; rehabilitation of offenders; and clinical, ethical, and legal considerations regarding sexual relations between therapists and former patients after termination.
These 10 essays explore the causes and consequences of therapist-patient sex in a broad, psychoanalytically informed context.