NOVEMBER 2004, VOLUME 32, NUMBER 2, Abstract 1
Therapist Sexual Feelings in Hypnotherapy: Managing Therapeutic Boundaries in Hypnotic Work
Cheri Adrian, University of California, Los Angeles
This article elaborates ways in which using hypnosis may create special vulnerability for the clinician, not only experiencing sexual feelings toward patients but also becoming confused about the meaning of these feelings, their relevance to treatment, and the maintenance of appropriate patient-clinician boundaries. Special qualities of the hypnotic experience and relationship likely to generate erotic feelings and impulses in patients and/or clinicians are addressed. A clinical case example illustrates many possible meanings of therapist sexual feelings and the impulses to avoidance or acting out they may provoke. Clinically appropriate and inappropriate ways of managing boundaries in the presence of sexual arousal and of using sexual feelings to deepen clinical understanding and direct treatment interventions are discussed.