Educational Objectives:

This course will teach psychotherapists to
• Review the importance of touch for human development and healing practices.

• Outline the objections for using touch in psychotherapy.

• Discuss the relationships between sexual and non-sexual forms of touch in therapy.

• Review professional organizations' codes of ethics on touch.

• Discuss concerns with touch as it relates to gender, dx, culture, power, patient history and context.

• Review and update California laws and regulations which are relevant to touch in psychotherapy.

• Review the risk management concerns with touch in psychotherapy.

• Utilize ethical decision-making regarding touch in psychotherapy.

• Discuss ethical and clinical guidelines for touch in psychotherapy.

Course Syllabus:

• The importance of touch

• Research on infant massage

• Touch culture and bonding

• Touch, ethnicity, region, class and sexual identity

• Type of touch in psychotherapy

• The prohibition of touch in psychotherapy

• Beyond verbal communication

• Touch in context

• Patients' perceptions of touch

• Touch and the therapeutic alliance

• Surveys on touch in therapy

• Clinical orientation on touch in therapy

• Definitions of sexual and non-sexual touch in therapy

• Body-Centered Therapies

• Touch with special populations

• Medical and psychological effects of massage

• Psychoanalytic prohibition of touch

• On power and touch in therapy

• Risk management prohibition of touch

• The slippery slope argument around touch

• Ethics codes regarding touch in therapy

• Ethical decision-making regarding touch in psychotherapy

• California law and touch in psychotherapy

• Guidelines for the ethical use of touch

• References

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