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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Managing Risk When Contemplating Multiple Relationships

By Jeffrey Younggren and Michael C. Gottlieb
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol 35(3), Jun 2004, 255-260.

Abstract

Entering into dual relationships with psychotherapy patients has been a topic of significant controversy in professional psychology. Although these types of extratherapeutic alliances have generally been considered to be unethical conduct, some authors recently have supported their development as both ethical and, in some cases, even therapeutic (A. Lazarus & O. Zur, 2002). In this article, the authors briefly review the general literature regarding dual relationships and offer the reader guidelines in applying an ethically based, risk-managed, decision-making model that could be helpful when a practitioner is considering entering into such relationships or when such relationships inadvertently develop.

The entire article is here, behind a paywall.

The authors ask many great questions from a risk management perspective.