Therapist sexual feelings in hypnotherapy: Managing therapeutic boundaries in hypnotic work

Abstract

This article elaborates ways that using hypnosis may create special vulnerability for the clinician, not only to experiencing sexual feelings toward patients but also to becoming confused about the meaning of these feelings and their relevance to treatment, as well as about the maintenance of appropriate patient-clinician boundaries. Special qualities of the hypnotic experience and relationship likely to generate erotic feelings and impulses in patients and clinicians alike are addressed. A clinical case example illustrates many possible meanings of therapist sexual feelings and the impulses to avoidance or acting out they may provoke. Clinically appropriate and inappropriate ways of managing boundaries in the presence of sexual arousal and of using sexual feelings to deepen clinical understanding and direct treatment interventions are discussed.