Psychotherapist and patient--Moral and ethical aspects, Interpersonal communication--Moral and ethical aspects, Confidential communications--Physicians 

The practice of observing therapeutic confidentiality is so riddled with exceptions that it has all but disappeared. This book lucidly describes the disappearance of privacy, showing how the clinical effect of this loss has been destructive and how mental health professionals may respond constructively. --The New England Journal of Medicine The authors, a therapist and a lawyer, document the erosion of psychotherapist-patient confidentiality caused by the reporting laws, by the requirements of managed care, and by other features of the contemporary culture of disclosure. They analyze the failure of organized psychology, psychiatry, and social work to sound the alarm about such invasions, a failure especially perplexing in light of judicial sympathy for the psychotherapist-patient privilege. To the authors, psychotherapy without confidentiality is impossible. They propose important remedies for this clinical and ethical disaster. Editorial Reviews Review The practice of observing therapeutic confidentiality is so riddled with exceptions that it has all but disappeared. This book lucidly describes the disappearance of privacy, showing how the clinical effect of this loss has been destructive and how mental health professionals may respond constructively. (The New England Journal Of Medicine) This well-written, provocative, and tendentious book wrestles with a fundamental issue for psychotherapists, especially those working psychodynamically and psychoanalytically. In a remarkable and vivid extended exposition, there is eloquent discussion,with compelling examples of possible clinical consequences, of the difference between legal and psychoanalytic approaches to data.... (Contemporary Psychology: The Apa Review Of Books) This well-written, provocative, and tendentious book wrestles with a fundamental issue for psychotherapists, especially those working psychodynamically and psychoanalytically. In a remarkable and vivid extended exposition, there is eloquent discussion, with compelling examples of possible clinical consequences, of the difference between legal and psychoanalytic approaches to data. (Contemporary Psychology: The Apa Review Of Books)