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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