Intimacy, Risk, and Reciprocity in Psychotherapy: Intricate Ethical Challenges

Abstract

Risk and uncertainty are inescapable existential challenges that face all therapists and their clients. However, they may be only partially and inadequately addressed in existing approaches to ethics and therefore merit further ethical consideration. This article builds on a dialogue between Bill Cornell, Sue Eusden, Carol Shadbolt, and the author about the ethical challenges posed by the revival of the relational tradition in transactional analysis. It proposes a new approach to the ethics of trust, one designed to respond to the intricacies of psychologically intimate therapeutic relationships. An ethic of trust is defined as one that supports the development of reciprocal relationships of sufficient strength to withstand the relational challenges of difference and inequality and the existential challenges of risk and uncertainty. Examples are provided to illustrate the application of this approach to ethics.

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Tim Bond

Tim Bond, Ph.D., Fellow of the British Association/or Counselling and Psychotherapy, is currently the Reader in Counselling and Professional Ethics in the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, and in private practice providing therapy and supervision. He is an occasional trainer and consultant to the ethics committee of the Institute of Transactional Analysis (ITA) in the UK. He can be contact at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, 8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1HH, UK; e-mail: [email protected].