Multiple Role Relationships

Module Overview12.html

Multiple Role Relationships

There is a reason why our class textbook devotes three chapters to multiple role relationships. They are common and sometimes unavoidable, but always need to be addressed. Module Two will address multiple role relationships and how to avoid conflict by adhering to an established protocol regarding professional boundaries.

Multiple role relationships are most often those relationships where an unintentional overlap of roles takes place or is about to take place. These may occur when an overlap of roles or intersection points has already taken place between the professional and the client, supervisee, graduate student, or research participant.

Consider the situation where you have a private practice in a rural setting where you offer psychotherapy to adults and children in your community. You have been in this community for about two years and your wife works as a teacher at one of the local elementary schools. One day your wife comes home complaining about one of her colleagues who had erupted angrily at her. Your wife tells you who it is and wants to talk about her. The person she is having a conflict with is an established client of yours. This is an unintentional potential multiple role relationship conflict. You have not done anything yet, but something has presented, and you must now navigate through what to do next. You will be seeing this client in two days. When you took on the client, she was working at another school. You were unaware she had transferred to the school where your wife works.

Now consider that you have been teaching a class in Ethics in Psychology at a local university. One of your students comes by your office most days when you are on campus. One day he brings you a gift of a painting he bought at a local art fair. It looks expensive. It is a painting of Sigmund Freud on the couch with a client in the analyst’s chair. Your student asks if you might like to join him for dinner on Friday night at his apartment. You accept his invitation, because he said he had so much he wanted to share with you about ethics. This multiple role relationship is intentional and the overlap of roles (in this case from teacher to friendship or dating) took place once you accepted the invitation, the painting, and the increasing amount of time the student spent in your office.

Psychologists do strive to keep their professional lives distinct and separate from their personal lives. We want to be aware of multiple role relationships, and professional expectations regarding boundaries. Think of it as being hired to do a job. You can do that job well if you understand the expectations and your job description. Now imagine that someone keeps adding things into your job description. We all know what that feels like. The first feeling is that of discomfort. Anger may follow. Before long, it will be time to make a decision, and what type of decision will you make? It is the same in the psychology profession. You can be happily moving along, doing work with clients in counseling, and then one day a client asks if you can arrange the next session at a coffee shop instead. Or, consider that the CEO at a corporation you consult with offers to double your salary if you will ignore some unpleasant results that came from an analysis you conducted. We do best to adhere to our jobs, understand the requirements asked of us in our jobs, and wisely watch for the inevitable times when someone adds something to our job description or when we add something to our job description.

References

Arienette22. (2011, June 8). File: Manchester Manifesto [Image]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manchester_Manifesto.png. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). June 8, 2011 at 09:40am EDT.