Review: Another horror for psychologists and therapists.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 04 10, 2014
This book is about a therapist becoming involved with a patient.  The therapist briefly resists,  citing transference and ethical considerations,  but you know his dad and his friend tell him to go for it,  so...  (his friend tells him he has no boss to answer to,  so who cares about ethics?)The patient is not well.  The author kind of throws labels around without knowing what they mean (he doesn't have OCD because he has no rituals.  Meanwhile he has to take water bottles with him when he goes out in case someone might need water.  He lives in a home that is oppressive and can't bear thinking about his mother,  and calls himself hopeless and useless, but is not clinically depressed because he cheers up OK.  And so on).Authors.  Becoming involved with a patient and *continuing to treat them* is a major violation of professional ethics.  I don't know how things work in England,  but in the US therapists are licensed professionals.  They work for themselves,  but patients are protected from unethical clinicians by licensing boards.  Just like doctors.  Personal relationships interfere with therapeutic relationships in so many ways it is like a cardinal rule of therapy to *not even treat friends.*Licensed therapists who need bosses to keep them from violating professional ethics are a hazard.  Shudder.Transference isn't just "falling in love with a therapist."  And it isn't the only reason that relationships are forbidden.Ugh.  I am so horrified to read that people are reading this and thinking this is how therapy works.  Therapy does not work like this.  A decent therapist would have stopped treating the patient the instant the relationship went beyond professional.I couldn't see the characters the way the author meant them in light of my understanding of the situation,  and couldn't finish the book.  It felt like a molestation to me,  just as if one of the characters was a child.