Educational Objectives:

This course will teach psychotherapists to
• Review the importance of touch for human development and healing practices.
• Outline the objections for using touch in psychotherapy.
• Discuss the relationships between sexual and non-sexual forms of touch in therapy.
• Review professional organizations' codes of ethics on touch.
• Discuss concerns with touch as it relates to gender, dx, culture, power, patient history and context.
• Review and update California laws and regulations which are relevant to touch in psychotherapy.
• Review the risk management concerns with touch in psychotherapy.
• Utilize ethical decision-making regarding touch in psychotherapy.
• Discuss ethical and clinical guidelines for touch in psychotherapy.

Course Syllabus:

• The importance of touch
• Research on infant massage
• Touch culture and bonding
• Touch, ethnicity, region, class and sexual identity
• Type of touch in psychotherapy
• The prohibition of touch in psychotherapy
• Beyond verbal communication
• Touch in context
• Patients' perceptions of touch
• Touch and the therapeutic alliance
• Surveys on touch in therapy
• Clinical orientation on touch in therapy
• Definitions of sexual and non-sexual touch in therapy
• Body-Centered Therapies
• Touch with special populations
• Medical and psychological effects of massage
• Psychoanalytic prohibition of touch
• On power and touch in therapy
• Risk management prohibition of touch
• The slippery slope argument around touch
• Ethics codes regarding touch in therapy
• Ethical decision-making regarding touch in psychotherapy
• California law and touch in psychotherapy
• Guidelines for the ethical use of touch
• References

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