ABSTRACT
T. Giovazolias and P. Davis interviewed counseling psychologists about their experiences of sexual attraction to clients; they reported becoming more interested in clients’ problems and that the feelings enhanced their therapeutic work with the clients. Every mental health association recognizes sexual contact with a client is a boundary violation. Sexual boundary violations are preceded by behaviors and interactions that in the beginning appear to have nothing to do with sex. K. S. Pope for example decried a growing specter of “touch anxiety” in the mental health field in which non-sexual human touch in a clinical setting is seen as inherently dangerous, wrong, harmful, and risking legal repercussions. Mental health professionals, during the course of the non-sexual boundary crossings, have innumerable reflection points: the first intimate self-disclosure; the first extra-office non-clinical contact; and the first disclosure of romantic or sexual attraction.
