Can Clients and Therapists Be Friends?

It's unethical for a psychotherapist to treat a close friend. Dual relationships occur when people are in two very different types of relationships at the same time. For example, when a psychotherapist rejects a close friend's invitation of a party, it may affect the friend's willingness to go to a psychotherapy session.

Furthermore, safe boundaries are hard to maintain. In order to offer professional psychotherapy sessions inside a safe space, then the existence of a time boundary is very important. Everything that happens in a psychotherapy session must stay within that psychotherapy session. However, being friends with the psychotherapist means that strict and safe boundaries cannot be created and enforced because the psychotherapist could see the friend outside of the boundaries set within the therapy session.

A client knows nothing about the personal life of a therapist, thus allowing projection and transference from the client to the therapist to take place. A therapist offer a blank canvas upon which the client can project their feelings, and it is essential that this blank canvas is uncontaminated by the therapist’s own personality and preferences.

個案和心理治療師可以成為朋友嗎？ 心理治療師與個案若成為朋友是不道德的。當人們同時處於兩種非常不同類型的關係中時，就會發生雙重關係。例如，當心理治療師拒絕親密朋友的聚會邀請時，可能會影響該朋友參加心理治療的意願。 此外，安全界限很難維護。為了在安全的空間內提供專業的心理治療，時間界限是非常重要。心理治療過程中發生的所有事情都必須保留在該心理治療過程中。但是，與心理治療師成為朋友意味著不能建立和執行嚴格和安全的界限，因為心理治療師可以在治療過程中設定的界限之外看到朋友。 個案對治療師的個人生活一無所知，因此可以進行從服務對像到治療師的投射和轉移。治療師會就像一塊空白的畫布，供個案在其上投射自己的感受，並且必須讓該空白畫布不受治療師自身個性和喜好的污染。