Paulina Fuentes Moad
UNISA, USA
Title: The danger of abrupt terminations in long-term Psychotherapy due to ethical complaints
Biography
Biography: Paulina Fuentes Moad
Abstract
Contemporary contexts of psychotherapy highlight the importance of ‘safety’ in the therapeutic relationship. It is imperative to understand what ‘safety’ means to our patients/clients, as well as to us as providers, in order to provide the highest quality of care. While the frame and limitations of the therapeutic context provide certain psychological safety, it is also a set up that is bounded to rules and regulations that can challenge the therapy/counseling relationship in particular situations. In order to protect the wellbeing of the general public, ethical bodies implement guidelines and policies that can force psychotherapists to stop their practices, temporarily or permanently, immediately. The shattered sense of safety and transgression to the self, that such traumatic ruptures can unravel in our patients/clients, regardless of their diagnosis or lack of them, is atrocious; particularly in therapies that acknowledge and work with transference and countertransference. The unpreparedness to deal with traumatic ruptures raises questions and concerns about how we can better think and act when dealing with such situations, whether it happens to us, or by being the subsequent therapist of people who have suffered abuse in therapy or traumatic ruptures. This presentation explores hypothetic and real scenarios of people who are victims of abrupt termination of therapy or supervision due to ethical boundary violations. It describes the horrors that, such patients are exposed to and provides clinical guidelines and advice to subsequent therapists and survivors in order to better understand such a pervasive type of trauma that is often concealed.