Consequences Of A Negative Dual Relationship

1. What is a dual relationship?
A dual relationship occurs any time there are boundary crossings between a provider and a client. These boundary crossings include any involvement with the client and provider that are outside of the professional relationship. Not all dual relationships or boundaries can cause problems in the professional relationship, but the ones that do, can cause major issues for both the provider as well as the client. Depending on what the boundary crossing was, for the professional, this could hold consequences as being reported to an ethics committee, losing their practice, or even jail time. For the client, again depending on the boundary violation, this could mean having psychological and/or emotional damage stemming from this dual-relationship.
Some examples of dual relationships that hold the greatest threat of negative consequences are those that include romantic or sexual relationships with clients or their families, the exchanging of services rather than paying for service, a therapist having a friendship with the client, his/her family, or with his/her friends; the same would hold when a client is friends with the therapist’s family or friends. Any relationship outside of the client/provider relationship where confidentiality could be compromised would be an example of a negative dual relationship. Also,

There are two parts that encompass autonomy: freedom and competence. In order to have the freedom to choose a course of action, one must be competent enough to be able to make an informed choice about a course of action (Houser & Thoma). This means that one must be capable of understanding, both intellectually and emotionally, all the information needed about a choice before freely choosing a course of action. Autonomy falls both within the ethical standards of the social sciences and within the governmental laws pertaining to informed