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closeness may make patients especially vulnerable to a therapist's advances and may increase the potential for harmful effects; 3 third, and perhaps most important, in recent years some disagreement has developed within the profession as to the propriety of existing ethical proscriptions. 4 The scope of this Article is limited to discussion of overt sexual relationships between adult, competent patients and properly trained and licensed psychotherapists. 5 Further, only relationships that take place ostensibly as part of the therapy, or contemporaneously with therapy are considered. 6 The problem is set out in Part I. In Part II, current social control devices are described and criticized for their failure in deterring the activity and their success in inhibiting the production of information about it. Part III suggests an alternative community policy, and Part IV proposes a means of carrying out that policy. tient transfers to the analyst childhood feelings for an important person in her life, usually a parent. The analyst concurrently experiences complementary feelings, usually of love, known as "countertransference." S. FREUD, Observations on Transference-Love (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Anaylsis III), in 12 THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD 157, 162 (J. Strachey ed. 1958). 3. 12 S. FREUD, supra note 2, at 162. 4. See notes 19-25 and accompanying text infra. 5. All but a tiny percentage of the reported instances of therapist-patient sexual activity have involved a male therapist and a female patient. Perry, Physicians' Erotic andNonerotic Contact With Patients, 133 AM. J. PSYCHIATRY 838, 840 (1976). Therefore, for convenience, the following discussion will use the male pronoun for the therapist and the female pronoun for the patient. This is not to suggest that analysis of the problem would be significantly different if the sexes were reversed, or if both parties were of the same sex.

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