Balancing Power Track 1

Healthcare Training Institute - Quality Education since 1979
Psychologist, Social Worker, Counselor, & MFT!!

Question 1 found at the bottom of this page
Answer Booklet | Table of Contents
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Welcome to the Home Study Course entitled "Balancing the Power Dynamic in the Therapeutic Relationship" sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute. Our primary intent for this course is to provide quality education to foster your professional growth. The Institute has provided quality education since 1979 to thousands nationally and in Canada as well. My name is Catherine Appleton.

We appreciate the fact you have chosen us as a vehicle for you to earn your Continuing Education Credit. I will be the narrator of this CD. Two co-authors of this course are Jill Daniels and Janel Brush. Jill has community mental health experience, and Janel has been in private practice focusing on marriage counseling.

Let's talk about the format of this CD. For the purpose of brevity most generally I will use the term therapist or mental health professional. However, don't let these terms deter you from applying the concepts to your situations. When you hear the term therapist, if your job title is social worker, marriage and family therapist, psychologist, mental health counselor, resident director, team leader, etc., merely substitute the appropriate term or title that is the most meaningful to you. Also, for the purposes of brevity, I will use the term client. However, transpose this term to the one that is the most meaningful for those you treat, whether it be consumer, patient, resident, etc. The key is not to let my use of these shorthand terms turn you off from the ideas presented by saying, "This doesn't apply to me -- I am a resident assistant or a therapist and I deal with patients, not clients."

Also, regarding completion of your Answer Booklet, periodically questions are asked regarding the content to which you have just listened. These questions correspond with the questions in your Answer Booklet. Merely write the correct letter in the blank next to the question. There is nothing tricky or hard about these questions. They are merely intended to verify your playing of this CD. Each question is included on this CD as well as in the Answer Booklet and sequentially deals with the section that precedes it. For this reason, to facilitate the answering of each question, you might read a question prior to listening to that section. By knowing what the question is ahead of time, you will then know the content to listen for that contains the answer. So if you have the Answer Booklet handy now, it might be a good idea to read question one and listen for the answer in this next session.

The purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your self awareness regarding balancing the power dynamic with clients. You will get out of it what you put into it. I challenge you to remold, reshape, and re-examine the information presented to find the gem that will be of value to you for current or future reference. And as you know, balancing power in therapeutic relationships is a continual challenge. You will note the Manual that accompanies this home study course touches on a very wide range of aspects of the client/therapist's relationship. The content of the Manual includes: Empowerment, Professional Codes of Ethics, and CounterTransference.

This CD primarily deals with balancing power concerning the violation of the personal contact boundary by therapists regarding their clients. The Institute selected this topic as a result of a survey conducted of Professional Licensure Boards in several states. The Boards were asked what ethical area they would select as having the greatest priority. We, as therapists, would like to think that mental health professionals taking sexual advantage of their clients is a problem that was left far behind in the free love era of the 70's and 80's and in the AIDS aware 90's. One would certainly feel this is not something to be concerned with, especially in this lawsuit prone new millennium. Don't you hear at least one advertisement per night on television from a lawyer pleading you to sue someone about something?

Rationalizations
But the truth is many mental health professions rely on a number of rationalizations and assumptions that allow us to maintain certain beliefs about balancing the power in the therapeutic relationship regarding sexual contact boundary. Here are three I've found. See where you fit. Number one: are you thinking, right now, balancing therapeutic power regarding the sexual contact with clients no longer exists? Number two: do you think that the occurrence of this contact is currently greatly exaggerated? Or number three: do you think that we are able to, "so to speak," police ourselves; and that clients who complain are treated with dignity and respect? I feel beliefs that maintain the silence about abuse of patients, clients, residents, etc. perpetuate these rationalizations.

My belief is that understanding is the first step to learning. My hope is that you feel you have a real interest in learning more about this complex and emotionally laden topic. And perhaps the gem, as mentioned earlier, that you might gain from this CD set is a better understanding of the dynamic of the abuse of power by those in therapeutic roles.

Thus, the content of this CD set will be divided into two parts. The first part deals with warning signs, risk factors, and stages of recovery. The final part deals with treatment interventions.

QUESTION 1
What is one rationalization some professionals use regarding abuse of the personal contact boundary with clients? To select and enter your answer go to Answer Booklet.