When Boundaries Betray Us: Beyond Illusions of What Is Ethical in Therapy and Life

I can also fully understand why many psychotherapists including social workers and psychologists would dislike this book; many therapists do not like to take responsibility for counter transference, which is basically a therapists mental illness projected towards the client. It does not portray the profession in a good light. It does, however, bring out many unfortunate truths inherent within the psychotherapy industry, and also is a premier as to what kind of psychotherapists to avoid. It get's five stars from me! A book with guts, for a client who was harmed to not only stand up for their rights, but ALSO to write a book about it I am impressed!


Thoughtful exploration of the harm psychotherapy can create   July 18, 2010
Sue
When Boundaries Betray Us follows the internal life of a woman severely damaged during her 18 months of psychotherapy. The account of actual events in the consulting room is vague for me. I learned of the unorthodoxy of sessions-- floor-sitting with a lit candle - and that (apparently) treatment stayed the course after the client's outpouring of intense poetry "gifts" and that the clinician overrode the client's desire to terminate.

Heyward developed an intense love attachment to her therapist which was shattered when Heyward discovered the role-playing was limited to the therapeutic hour. The book lacked enough information to provide an impression whether this love was encouraged or simply the client's wishful thinking. But Heyward came to see her therapist as a Jekyll and Hyde.

Heyward raises some important points about the foundation of psychotherapy. It can be phony, role-playing, one sided, and authoritarian in the so-called service of healing. Heyward finds relief and healing in more egalitarian dialogues.

I rated this book four stars because it a scarce entry in a much-needed library of why therapy goes wrong the the client's process of recovery when it does. The mental health professionals typically avoid the subject, or predictably discredit the source. (One commenter in the Heyward book notes that mental health professionals use diagnosis and interpretation as weaponry.)

The only literature I've found about healing from harmful therapy has been written by clients.

Contrary to comments above, I don't see Heyward as sad, I see her as a challenge to a tone-deaf status quo, one who has "done her work" far beyond the person treating her.




how terribly sad   February 14, 2004
5 out of 7 found this review helpful

When a woman writes a book from a perspective of a wounded client who exhibits such narcissistic tendencies (if not full blown pathology), and parades how out of touch, demanding and unwilling or unable to work through her therapy she is, and then attempts to justify her own inability to connect with her deeper self, it just seems sad. It is also a gross injustice to the analytic and therapeutic communities and their understandings of what the real inner work is about. While reading Carter's book all I could think of was why didn't her so called 'meaningful' relationships manage to see through her acting out and assist her in shifting to the inner drama she was attempting to act out once more with a therapist. The analytic literature (especially Schwartz-Salant and Johnson's books on Narcissism) clearly articulates the stages of inner work that Carter consistently attempted to avoid through her displacement of her unsatisfied needs onto her therapeutic relationship. I would love to hear Elizabeth's side of the journey, for I suspect she knew and was unwilling to collude in another "violent" relationship that would duplicate the unsatisfying inner relationship that Carter both demands and wants replicated. I suspect down the road, if she ever manages to break through the narcissistic 'split' and quits displacing her 'empty holes' onto spirituality, political patriarchy etc., she will arrive at a much different appreciation of how her therapist did exactly what was needed to invite Carter into her own self's drama, and it was Carter's inability to hold that tension that led to her termination. Oh how terribly sad.