Sexual Boundary Violations: Therapeutic, Supervisory, and Academic Contexts

Sexual boundary violations are considered the most serious ethical infractions in the mental health profession, as well as in higher education and pastoral counseling. Recognized as unethical due to the power imbalance inherent in the structure of the therapist-patient and teacher-student dyads, erotic contact between therapists and patients has been revealed in prevalence studies to occur at an unacceptably high incidence rate (nine to twelve percent) among mental health practitioners. There exist few programs, teaching methods, and preventative measures that adequately address the problem of sexual boundary violations, despite the fact that discussing this problem openly is no longer taboo. Sexual Boundary Violations addresses this gap, providing educators, trainers, and clinicians with a resource to aid in developing programs, ethics workshops, seminars, and other educative or clinical teaching projects.

About the Author

Andrea Celenza, PhD , is an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School. She has authored and presented numerous papers on therapists who have engaged in sexual misconduct with a focus on training, supervisory, and rehabilitation issues. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Karl A. Menninger Memorial Award, the Felix & Helena Deutsch Prize, and the Symonds Prize. She is in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts.