PSYCHOLOGISTS AND SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR IN PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

6 February 2001

The community expectation of the professional psychologist is that a psychologist will act with utmost integrity.  The community must be confident that personal boundaries will be maintained and that any person who seeks the assistance of a psychologist will not be at risk of conduct on the part of the psychologist which transgresses the highest standards of conduct in relation to those boundaries. Sexual behaviour falls into a special category of behaviour in almost every culture and in regard to psychological practice there are particular vulnerabilities here by reason of the special nature and potential intensity of the helping relationship.

Sexual conduct with a person who has come for assistance brings community censure and damages the credibility of the profession, eroding thereby its effectiveness.  Given the power differential in favour of the psychologist, the onus is on the psychologist to behave in a professional manner.  It is never acceptable to blame the client, patient, student, supervisee, or other person who has come to a psychologist in that psychologist’s professional capacity, if a sexual relationship develops. Nor is it acceptable to seek to avoid responsibility by reason of there being an ongoing relationship even some considerable time later, nor by reference to the maturity of the other party, nor to their complicity in the sexual relationship, nor to their lack of personal complaint, nor to protestations of there having been ‘no harm done’, and so forth.

A psychologist who engages in sexual conduct with a person who is presently consulting them in their professional role will be regarded as exhibiting conduct at the severest level of disapprobation in breach of all customary Codes of Ethics and Conduct, and clearly generating a well-founded judgment of professional misconduct. Further, once a professional relationship has ended, there will remain residual aspects of that relationship which point to the need for great care in regard to future sexual conduct between parties to the professional relationship. In relation to both ongoing or completed professional contact there is also a need to consider the ethical implications of sexual conduct with close friends or close relatives of the individual being offered professional contact.

The rationale for the Board’s position in respect of this matter has been supported in many contexts by psychology disciplinary bodies in various jurisdictions, as by similar bodies in other allied professions such as medicine and law.  That rationale expresses such points as the following:

1. The helping relationship depends on a level of utmost trust between the parties.

2. Whatever the state of the philosophical debate between different schools of psychology concerning matters of ‘power’ and ‘boundaries’, the parties are not equal.  This is recognised also by the fact that each helping relationship will be characterised by different degrees of dependency, duration, and intensity of interpersonal involvement.  Such matters will likely go to the sanction applied following a judgment of professional misconduct arising from sexual conduct.

3. The psychologist’s role as an expert, an authority, generates a dimension of influence over and potential exploitation of those who seek assistance.

4. In addition to psychological damage caused directly by a breach of the principle being enunciated here, exploitation within a helping relationship can cause exacerbation of psychological problems.  Further, it potentially puts the person who has come for assistance beyond the reach of subsequent efforts to help by reason of the loss of trust.

The Board now has considerable experience in dealing with these matters and rejects the view that changing social standards require a less stringent approach to them.  In relation to these matters it reiterates the principles contained in both its own Code of Ethical Conduct and the Code of Ethics of the Australian Psychological Society, as well as provisions of similar intent in codes of sister professional associations in other comparable countries to Australia.