ABSTRACT
Protecting the confidentiality of your patients and the analytic process may be the most vexing challenge you face as a writer, because a cascade of clinical, ethical, and writing issues are involved that are not easily untangled or resolved. How will you disguise your patient’s identity without sacrificing the specifics on which understanding is based? How will you select clinical material without diluting its richness and complexity? Will you obtain your patient’s written consent? How and when? If not, why? If you don’t ask for your patients’ consent, what are the risks and consequences of their discovering what you write? What constitutes informed consent in the context of transference/countertransference dynamics or the treatment of a child, family, group, or organization? How will you track the effects of asking (or not asking) your patients for their consent? How will writing affect your clinical work? How will the possibility of your patients’ reading what you write affect what and how you write? How will the necessary compromises you make to protect confidentiality constrict the development of theory and practice? Will you share what you write with those you write about? How and when? How will your patients be affected by learning more about you from your writing?
