ABSTRACT
Sexual fantasies and romantic attraction to clients are common occurrences, and mental health professionals have a choice as to how they deal with the experiences. Clinicians, recognizing the consequences of acting on sexual desire occurring within the clinical realm, can and do successfully manage attraction to a client as well as develop improved professional competence through the experience. Some reported attraction led them to seek information on attraction, engage in personal insight work, talk to supervisors about the experience, and learn how to better self-regulate the tension, discomfort, and excitement that sexual attraction entails. The T. Ward and S. M. Hudson self-regulation model acknowledges that some individuals purposefully and even relentlessly seek out sexual activity that victimizes others. Predatory clinicians utilize grooming and seduction to obtain their goals of sexual contact with a client without detection. Sexual arousal too impacts decision-making. Consider the oversexualization effect, which could partially explain why males engage in far more sexual boundary violations than females.
