Abstract
The harmfulness and prevalence of sex between therapist and patient are difficult to research. One reason for this is the difficult of establishing a rate of harm; general population trends cannot be established within reasonable limits. A second problem involves determining the cause of observed harm. Therapists who treat patients who have had sex with a therapist may incorrectly conclude that symptoms resulted from that inappropriate relationship, while another therapist might attribute them to childhood sexual abuse or other causes. Patients with borderline or histrionic personality disorder may be at greatest risk of therapist-patient sex. Outrage at these violations of professional ethics must be separated from assessment of symptoms. Important questions are: (1) did lasting harm result? and (2) if harm resulted, how much did the sex contribute to it? Outrage should not alter the standards of validity adopted by authors of clinical reports.
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