Stanley Richards on boundaries!

Magic Circle

Why is it so inadvisable to have two people from the same family as your individual clients in psychotherapy? This person ‘X’ comes along who is the mother/daughter/father/son/brother etc of your existing client ‘A’. Everything in your training tells you not to take on this new client ‘X’ because it will contaminate your relationship with your existing client ‘A’. Of course, we are not rule-bound robots and situational ethics have a place – but one is alert and wary!

This magic circle idea, or crucible is very important in my work. Yet at this moment I am thinking of breaking such a container (not exactly drasticall by doing therapy, but by having some familiy discussions to hold it.) Where does that fit in? In this context this item is worth looking at again.

One Reply to “Stanley Richards on boundaries!”

  1. Epilogue:

    I did not create the leak in the container that I was contemplating. Thank goodness. The unit of the one-to-one remained sealed, and then there was an explosion in there – which was well contained in the psychotherapy – and if I had mover to family work it would have never happened. It would in fact have repeated old dynamics at the root of the problem.

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