ABSTRACT
Although it is only recently that the issue of sexual exploitation within counselling and psychotherapy has started to be named in the therapeutic world (Russell 1993; Rutter 1990), it is not new or specific to modernity. As far back as the practice of mesmerism, we can discover an awareness that such exploitation is a possibility. In this case it was conceptualised as gender specific. Chertok and de Saussure (1979:10-11) cite an observation made in the late eighteenth century that:
The woman is always magnetized by the man…whatever the nature of the illness, it does not divest us of our own sex, nor does it entirely remove us from the power of the other sex…It is not surprising that the senses are inflamed.
