Secondary Relationships

Photo by Rick Hustead

This is dialog from a scene in the 1996 film Twister, in which two tornado chasers discuss filing for divorce.

Billy Harding, introducing his new fiancée to his estranged wife, Jo: “She’s a therapist.”

Jo Harding: “Yours?”

In my blog titled, My New Office, I explain how the furniture in this space is positioned to prevent my (the hypnotherapist) invading a client’s space. Many people are initially nervous and wary about hypnosis the first time they come in for a session, including those who are seeking hypnotherapy as a “last resort” to overcome an unwanted behavior. Furthermore, characteristics such as the person’s suggestibility and their Emotional and Physical sexuality (personality) may require greater physical distance between us during the therapy.

It is also important to maintain a professional boundary between the hypnotherapist and his or her clients. By this I mean that the therapist must separate (and keep separate) his or her personal life and interests from the client’s. It is not uncommon for clients to start to feel similar emotions for the therapist that they already carry for someone in their own life to their therapist during the hypnotherapeutic process. Or, the person may develop strong feelings for the therapist that have nothing to do with those he or she has for a significant other at home. This phenomenon is called transference. With the client already highly suggestible to the hypnotherapist, it is easy to see how this can occur.

Counter-transference is the phenomenon in which a therapist reciprocates the client’s feelings/emotions. Like the client, these feelings for the other person can be negative or positive. The conflict arises when the professional can no longer provide effective hypnotherapy for the client because these strong emotions erode the ethical parameters of this professional relationship. Whether the therapist has become unable to provide unconditional positive regard for the client or has become too emotionally and/or socially involved with the person outside the therapy setting, the therapeutic relationship is untenable and should be ended.

The scene I quoted at the beginning of this essay illustrates this conflict of interest. Billy Harding does not explicitly say that he met his new girlfriend because she was his therapist when his marriage to Jo started to break down. In addition to the fact that this kind of secondary relationship is unethical and unacceptable in the context of their therapeutic relationship, it also makes the new couple’s partnership potentially more fragile. It could be argued that Billy took the unrequited emotions he still carried for his estranged wife and transferred them onto his therapist. The therapist then broke a golden rule of therapy and got romantically involved with her client. Regardless of the emotional bond they shared outside of the relationship, they sacrificed the progress of the emotional “work” Billy had been doing in his therapist’s office up to that point. His feelings for his soon-to-be ex-wife did not get resolved enough to stand up to the real-world challenge of asking Jo to sign divorce papers to officially, finally ending their marriage.

To prevent transference and counter-transference in my hypnotherapy practice, it is important to establish strong professional boundaries around the therapeutic relationship that the hypnotherapist shares with a client. The hypnotherapist’s role in a client’s life is to use tools such as hypnosis and guided imagery to help the individual achieve vocational or avocational self-improvement goals, not to become that person’s new best friend, dog-walker or spouse.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016