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Will Psychotherapy Be Transformed in the 1980s?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2021

Barry R. Furrow
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The attractions of psychiatric mishaps are similar for the journalist and the lawyer - the perverse magnetism of sex and violence. A therapist engages in sex with his female patient; he fails to prevent a patient's suicide; or he releases a patient who then kills a third person. These are the themes of popular journalism, and of current highly publicized litigation involving psychotherapists. In this issue of Law, Medicine& Health Care, two articles look at the liability of the therapist. Michael D. Roth and Laurie J. Levin in Dilemma of Tarasoff: Must Physiciains Protect the Public or Their Patients? offer a careful look at the potential liability of the therapist, concerning the duty to warn others of a patient's threats, in light of the leading cases. The authors outline the parameters of the law, fuzzy as its current boundaries may be, in a useful attempt to offer the psychotherapist guidance through the minefield of tort liability. Sheila Taub, in a broader look at the subject, searches for threads which might link and rationalize the case-law in these hot areas, particularly with regard to abuse of the therapeutic relationship.

Type
Editorial
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , June 1983 , pp. 96 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1983

References

Slovenko, R., The Hazards of Writing or Disclosing Information in Psychiatry, Behavioral Sciences & the Law 1: 109, 127 (1983).Google Scholar
Watkins, Watkins, Malpractice in Clinical Social Work: A Perspective on Civil Liability in the 1980's, Behavioral Sciences & the Law 1: 55, 69 (1983).Google Scholar
See, e.g., Ward, Feldman, Psychotherapeutic Injury: Reshaping the Implied Contract as an Alternative to Malpractice, North Carolina Law Review 58: 63 (1979); Furrow, B., Defective Mental Treatment: A Proposal for the Application of Strict Liability to Psychiatric Services, Boston University Law Review 58: 291 (1978).Google Scholar
See, e.g., Psychotherapy Research: Methodological and Efficacy Issues (American Psychiatric Association, Washington, D.C.) (1982).Google Scholar
Carpenter, Heinrichs, The Psychotherapy of the Schizophrenic Disorders, in Psychiatry 1982 Annual Review (Grinspoon, L., ed.) (APA, Washington, D.C.) (American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C.) (1982) at 16.Google Scholar
Starr, P., The Social Transformation of American Medicine (Basic Books, Inc., New York) (1982) at 420.Google Scholar
A New Market for Hospital Chains, Business Week, April 2, 1983, at 124a.Google Scholar
Starr, supra note 6, at 447.Google Scholar