Dr. Pepper,

I saw your recent inquiry about a panel, and I have long and winding response to this, with some questions of my own:
I wanted to connect with  you a bit at the conference to share a disturbing experience I had, that seems right up you alley of professional focus (which I greatly appreciate, by the way – ethics and boundaries). I was in an institute this year, and at the end of the first day, it emerged that one of the institute participants was the (active, current) therapist of another member of the institute group. It then emerged that this had been known ahead of time, and the therapist in question made no effort to change, etc. and saw no problem with it once it did emerge. This bothered me immensely and it had a terrible, negative effect on the group. When I criticized it at first, there was enormous anger at me from many group members, who advocated for this sort of thing. There was also a blanket criticism of “you should not criticize what we are doing down in Austin” (even though I hadn’t knowingly done so – as the persons in question were from New York). On the second day, I had some support in the group, but I feel this was irresponsible, unethical, and potentially harmful to the client involved – and it made for some terrible dynamics in the institute group (of course).
The persons involved, and those defending it, are persons highly associated with the Modern Psychoanalysis school. I remember that in an early AM panel two years ago, this issue came up, and both you and several members of the audience suggested that there were more significant boundary problems in the Modern school. I have been meaning to ask you about this ever since – I am very sensitive to these issues (and I follow Rutan, Alonso, etc. who emphasize boundaries in a very significant way)…. and I have been trying to figure out how much I should approach or keep distant from the Modern folks. I had an excellent experience with Greg McColl a few years ago, and saw no problem there, but some of the respected luminaries have me a bit concerned. Can you give me any sense of this? I would be very grateful.
Also, as for you panel, I might be interested if you thought I would have something to say. I am involved in teaching at Smith College SSW, at NSGP’s training program, and I run a t-group for interns (none of whom I supervise directly – and we have a clear contract for delineation of roles, etc.) for interns (psychology, social work, mental health counseling) in the psychiatric hospital where I work. In none of these roles would I ever consider combining teaching or training with psychotherapy, as I feel it would be harmful to do so. I suspect you may be after folks from psychoanalytic institutes, etc. where this may be more common.