Therapeutic Ethics and the Movies: What Films Can Teach Psychotherapists About Ethics and Boundaries in Therapy

This unique course on therapeutic ethics and boundaries uses movie vignettes to discuss ethical dilemmas. The course focuses on five areas: Confidentiality, Self-Disclosure, Touch, Dual Relationships and Out-Of-Office Experiences (i.e., home visits, in-vivo exposures, attending a wedding, incidental encounters, etc). Each of these five topics is reviewed in depth followed by a series of movie vignettes and ethical commentary on the vignettes.

Themes in movies have long shown a fascination with therapeutic boundaries. What About Bob depicts a client who crosses the therapeutic boundary and follows his analyst on his vacation. Good Will Hunting shows a counselor who grabs a client, uses foul language and conducts therapy on a bench by the river. Antwone Fisher describes a client being invited to a family dinner with his therapist. Prime takes us into the complexities of dual relationships when the client is also the lover of the therapist’s son. Many movies, such as Basic Instinct and Mr. Jones, depict the ultimate boundary issue — sexual relationships between therapist and client. Prince of Tides puts a twist on boundaries and depicts a sexual relationship between a therapist and the client’s brother.

This intermediate-level course is comprised of nine online articles. The first article provides a general introduction on boundary ethics in therapy and the next five articles cover the following topics: Self-Disclosure, Dual Relationships, Confidentiality, Touch and Out-of-Office Encounters. Each chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the topic followed by a description of movie vignettes and an ethical commentary. The seventh article provides descriptions and details of the movies included in the above five articles, and the last article provide an update on California laws. Additional resources and references are provided for further study, but they are not part of the course.

Due to copyright laws, this course does not include movie clips, only descriptions of the movies.

Disclaimer: This course is purely educational and does not intend to serve as a license (or permission) to mental health professionals to prescribe or practice any of the approaches discussed in this course unless they fall within the scope of practice of your profession. Check with your licensing board about the scope of practice of your profession to make sure you practice within that scope. It also does not serve as a permission to title yourself in any specific way.