Questionable Judgment?

By Jim McCollum, Spring 2011

In a recent student government meeting, it was revealed that former members of student government may have taken the stipend money for SGA positions for which they didn’t fulfill the responsibilities. While the specifics of these allegations have yet to be determined, for me it raises a broader question about the relationship between a therapist’s personal life and his or her role as a clinician.

The APA Ethics Code covers the most egregious ethical violations, prohibiting therapy with former sexual partners, restricting sexual relationships with former therapy clients, and noting the possibility of disciplinary action against therapists convicted of a felony or censure by licensing bodies. However, the Ethics Code leaves untouched lesser, more subjective ethical violations, such as non-felony theft. In short, if an ethical violation does not involve a felony conviction, sexual relationships with clients, or something carried out in the course of one’s professional conduct, such as improper billing, the Ethics Code leaves the violation to the judgment and reaction of the therapist and their community.

The actions that some would deem ethical violations are what interest me because I wonder if we as psychologists or therapists ought to be held to a higher standard than the average citizen. This question is a facet of the larger question of what qualifies one to be a clinical psychologist. Officially, we acquire this privilege by virtue of our education and training, but what I am wondering about is more like credibility. If we are to judge someone’s social, emotional, or occupational functioning, must we be high functioning in those areas?

For me, I don’t have a hard and fast answer. I don’t think a therapist must have depression to work with someone who’s depressed, and I don’t think a therapist must be a criminal to work with criminals. Likewise, I don’t think being depressed or a criminal disqualifies one from being a therapist, necessarily. However, one’s personal conduct bears on one’s credibility. If someone were going to pronounce someone else’s behaviors as maladaptive or deficient in some way, then I would expect that the person judging would be a relatively high functioning person. Perception matters, and even though it would be somewhat irrational to discount what one learns in therapy if he or she discovers their therapist committed some ethical lapse, I can understand it.