Therapist-Patient Sexual Contact

Although sexual contact between therapist and patient has often been the subject of popular movies, books, jokes, and cartoons, there is surprisingly little written about it in the psychoanalytic literature (Dahlberg, 1970). The infrequency with which therapist-patient sexual contact is addressed is even more astonishing when its prevalence is considered. There are no statistics available for analysts as a separate group; however, Holroyd and Brodsky (1977) in a nationwide survey of licensed psychologists (70 percent response rate) reported that 5.5 percent of males and .6 percent of females indicated that they had had intercourse with patients during treatment; and an additional 2.6 percent of male psychologists and .3 percent of females reported intercourse with patients within three months of termination. Those who identified themselves as psycho-dynamic were no more or less likely to report erotic contact with patients. A nationwide survey of psychiatrists reported very similar results concerning the self-reported incidence of doctor-patient intercourse (Gartrell, Herman, Olarte, Feldstein, & Localio, 1986). Gartrell et al. (1987) also found that 65 percent of the psychiatrists they surveyed reported treating patients who had been sexually involved with previous therapists and 87 percent found the effects to be harmful. Since many patients who have been sexually abused probably do not return to treatment, and many therapists do not report these incidences for obvious reasons, it seems likely that these estimates of patient-therapist sexual contact are conservative. Zelen (1985) quoted the February, 1976, Los Angeles Times as saying that the best insurance estimates are that about one out of five psychotherapists would be intimate with one or more patients at some time during his or her career. Due to the large number of malpractice suits against psychotherapists for sexual misconduct in the late 1970s