Breaking Hearts: Ethically Handling Transference and Countertransference in Therapy

Abstract

This paper examines ethical principles and their application to erotic or romanticized transference and countertransference. Transference is identified as unconscious feelings of a client that are felt for another individual of significant importance such as a therapist. Countertransference describes the feelings a therapist may develop for clients they are working with throughout the course of therapy. Ethical principles that are explored consist of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, fidelity, and justice. We explore how those principles relate to romantic or sexual feelings in therapy and discuss what therapists can do to appropriately and ethically handle those feelings in therapy.

Keywords:

• Transference
• countertransference
• ethical principles
• psychotherapy
• therapeutic relationship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.