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Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 34:109–112, 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0884-1233 print/1540-7349 online DOI: 10.1080/08841233.2014.860852

BOOK REVIEWS

Frederic G. Reamer. (2012). Boundary Issues and Dual Relationships in the Human Services (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press (249 pp, $35 paperback, ISBN# 978-0231157018).

Boundary Issues and Dual Relationships in the Human Services (2nd ed.) by Fredericic G. Reamer belongs on every practitioner’s library shelf. In a clear and cogent way, Reamer defines what constitutes boundary violations according to the NASW Code of Ethics and the American Psychological Association’s Code of Ethics. He describes a range of boundary issues and blurred professional relationships that exploit clients and violate the ethical codes of the helping professions.

Reamer refers to altruism, intimate relationships, personal benefit, and emotional and dependency needs and devotes full chapters to each of the boundary violations that may result. The author then offers a breadth of excellent illustrations, drawn from public agencies, schools, community ser- vices, and private practice. His examples include men and women (both gay and straight) who are counselors, social workers, and psychologists. Reamer, moreover, draws on multiple ethnicities, races, social classes, and geographic locations (urban settings versus rural settings) for his case material. These examples are real and derive from his long career as a leading social work ethicist.

A particular sensitivity is required to describe the kinds of clinicians who may be drawn into dual relationships with clients, and Reamer demonstrates this amply with a sensitive and nonjudgmental attitude. These individu- als may be isolated; many may be dealing with substance abuse. Others may suffer from borderline, narcissistic, or sociopathic disorders. Some can- not tolerate their clients’ aggression or negative transferences. Still, others may have experienced severe emotional deprivation earlier in their own lives. Some were sexualized in childhood or experienced other kinds of explicit boundary violations by adults. Further, some practitioners who vio- late boundaries are suffering from painful divorces or other recent losses; others have themselves been traumatized.

While Reamer shows us how certain clinicians can delude themselves into thinking that the boundary crossing is in the patient’s best interest, he is equally clear about the psychological damage done when a clinician violates established boundaries, including engaging in sexual conduct with a client.

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Other such violations include bartering, dissolving boundaries around length of sessions, contacting clients outside of the therapy hour, or taking on roles that are not therapeutic in a client’s life. He urges clinicians to refrain from relationships with clients after the treatment ends, with a few exceptions. In my own view, there are no exceptions.

Practitioners must follow certain procedures when a boundary violation has occurred. With clarity and detail, Reamer shows how to elicit effective consultation with supervisors, agency administrators, and ethical experts. In my own experience, it is the least self-aware clinicians who engage in boundary violations, so I would have liked to have read more about the role of whistle blowers when ethical violations occur.

I had hoped Reamer also would elaborate on the inevitable trauma scenarios in which practitioner and patient, who have previously been trau- matized, reenact the trauma with one another. When psychic or physical trauma has occurred, clinicians may see themselves as the rescuer (or the victim or the bystander). Clients also may enact a trauma scenario, taking on one of the roles from the earlier trauma and acting it out in therapy. I recently supervised a clinician (with a very severe trauma history) who was being sued for malpractice. With me, she minimized the boundary vio- lation that had occurred, and only later did I realize the ways in which I was enlisted to be the “bystander” in the trauma enactment. While the clinician ultimately lost her license to practice, the ethical dilemmas in which supervi- sors like myself may find themselves might have been another fruitful topic in an already excellent book.

Finally, I hope that in the next edition, Reamer will address the trend in graduate schools of social work of teaching first-year practice by start- ing with relational theories. Many first-year students do not have the basic theories or skills to establish and maintain boundaries when first building therapeutic relationships. Yet many are starting their training with a critique of boundaries from a post-modern perspective and with an “invitation” to break boundaries as a way of lessening the power differential between client and therapist. Students who begin their clinical learning from a post-modern perspective are asked to de-center the authority of the practitioner, to critique the asymmetry of the relationship, and to deconstruct the therapeutic frame before they learn how to establish it. Indeed, students are being asked to break boundaries before they know why they need to exist. This pedagogy can lead to inappropriate self-disclosure, touch, and sharing one’s fantasies with the client. While these acts are sanctioned among some postmodern clinicians, they may be dangerous for beginners who do not yet know the importance of listening to the client, tolerating one’s own impulses to dis- close, and exerting therapeutic restraint. This is an important topic, which I hope Reamer will address in the future.

Nevertheless, this book should be read by all students because they need to know the parameters of helping relationships, the damage done

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when the parameters are violated, and the behaviors that are absolutely unacceptable. The wisdom and experience that Reamer offers here is a true contribution to our field. When one considers the lack of reliability of self- report, it is indeed quite frightening to consider how many boundary vio- lations actually occur in practice. His remains a timely and very clear book that should be required reading today in all schools of social work.

Joan Berzoff, MSW, EdD School of Social Work

Smith College

Donna Hardina. (2013). Interpersonal Social Work Skills for Community Practice. New York, NY: Springer (489 pp. $58.00, paperback, ISBN# 978- 0826108111).

Specifically dedicated to the skills that social workers need to advance com- munity practice, this creative book is long overdue. Grounded in the wisdom and evidence of well-honed interpersonal social work skills, such as inter- viewing, assessment, and group work, Donna Hardina’s new text takes community practice to a higher level than ever before developed in book form; indeed, she displays the most thorough understanding of research on community practice that I have read in any community practice text. Skills traditionally associated with micro–social work practice are thought- fully and explicitly applied to macro-practice. For example, when describing the challenging task of recruiting and motivating volunteers and constituents to engage in community organizing, the author explains that: “assessment of motivation to act is therefore as important in macro practice as in micro” (p. 51). Importantly, she does not overdo such examples when linking this theme to the community practice literature and her own experience. By way of illustration, she cites Saul Alinsky’s wisdom on the topic because he believed that action follows when a challenge is immediate, specific, and realistic.

Several strong sections of the book focus on participatory action research in terms of both assessment and evaluation. In a social work envi- ronment, where “participation” can become rhetorical and lose meaning for marginalized communities, Hardina takes a sound, ethical approach to the significance of such participation, including possible solutions for community facilitators. She also takes on issues of ownership, trust, and power sharing and teaches future practitioners to apply their interpersonal social work skills and ethics in these arenas.

A particularly nice feature of this text is the inclusion of “Exercises and Assignments” at the end of each chapter. These exercises are unique because they ask students to apply newly acquired skills by actually engaging with a community or in some alternative action-oriented activity. For instance, in a

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