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Therapists at Risk, by Lawrence E. Hedges, Robert Hilton, Virginia Wink Hilton, and O. Brandt Caudill, Jr. is a horror story about the alarming psychodynamic, personal, legal, and ethical issues confronting psychotherapists today. According to the authors, modern therapists are at grave risk and face dangers severe enough to undermine the field of dynamic psychotherapy. The authors state that techniques still being taught in graduate schools are now viewed as potential lawsuit material, and that therapy as it was once known no longer can be practiced. Transferences requiring the most erudite, sophisticated techniques that therapists have learned to elicit in the treatment of symbiotic, psychotic, and deeply regressed patients, have produced dangerous accusations of a false nature against unwitting practitioners, who have been charged with seducing their patients, abusing them, and implanting false memories in their minds. Such individuals are unaware that they are avoiding insight into deep pockets of their psyches by projecting them onto innocent therapists. Nevertheless, their indictments are often supported by authorities untrained in the dynamics of psychotherapy. To protect themselves and their families from professional, emotional, and financial ruin, many colleagues hesitate to treat clients who present a severe personality disorder or a history of abuse.
Changing demands in the marketplace with increasingly tight insurance review procedures and managed care regulations present further hazards to mental health practitioners. Therapists formerly believed that if they acted sincerely and in good faith, did the best job they could, and