ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors discuss another range of problems, related to the fact that therapists, like everyone else, remain citizens of a society—and, however much they might wish otherwise, that society cannot be ignored. Worries about psychotherapists being used as coercive agents of the state have also been expressed over the use of therapy, especially family therapy, with juveniles who have fallen foul of school, social services, or police authorities. In principle the use of psychotherapy in coercive institutions or settings is not worse than the primary coercion, or threat of it, that vitiates a patient’s consent. Psychotherapy in such contexts should be banned only if it is impossible to provide strong safeguards against its abuse. Psychotherapy is unique in that its subject-matter includes those areas of a patient’s life which are most secret, often kept, by defence mechanisms, even from the patient’s own awareness.
