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GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION
Psychotherapists focus on everyone else's problems and very often fail to attend to their own needs. This neglect has led to an extremely high rate of alcoholism, depression, fears and suicide among psychotherapists. Consequently, the burned-out or impaired therapist provides ineffective treatment, which may result in legal or ethical liabilities. This course attends to the hazards that the practice of psychotherapy pose to the practitioner, such as emotional depletion, isolation, helplessness, grandiosity, depression, vicarious traumatization, worry, grief, one-way intimacy and a whole range of fears.
The paper also attends to the hazards posed to the practitioner's family, which include emotional drain, danger of over-interpretation, distancing, using psychological jargon, inability to let go of the therapists' mode at home. Finally, the paper uses Maslach' (1986), as "a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work with people in some capacity" and outlines how it can be avoided by finding ways to balance personal and professional lives of therapists and employ a variety of other means to prevent burnout.
The course is composed of five articles. The first article, Psychotherapists and their families: The effect of clinical practice on individual and family dynamics, explores the question, are psychotherapists' families disadvantaged, or are they fortunate to have a therapist-parent who is an authority in the emotional, cognitive and behavioral domains? The second article, A phenomenological study of vicarious traumatization (VT) amongst psychologists and professional counselors working in the field of sexual abuse/assault, defines VT as the impact on the therapist of exposure to traumatic client material and discusses its origin and impact on clinicians and ways to help clinicians deal with VT. The third article, Burnout and the ethics of self-care for therapists, discusses the ethical and practical aspects of burnout and self-care. The fourth article, Codes of ethics on therapists' impairment, burnout and self care, reviews the sections relating to burnout, impairment and self-care in the APA, NASW, ApA, ACA, AAMFT, CAMFT, CPA, FTI codes of ethics. The last article, Taking care of the caretakers, summarizes the hazards of our profession, reviews the ways to prevent burnout and provides an extensive bibliography on burnout.
Educational Objectives:
This course will teach psychotherapists to
Identify burnout.
Summarize the potential hazards of being a psychotherapist.
List the positive and negative impact of psychotherapists on their families.
Identify the dynamic of vicarious traumatization.
Identify the relevant codes of ethics to burnout, impairment and self-care.
Distinguish how to prevent and deal with burnout.
Course Syllabus:
On psychotherapists' burnout
Why psychologists are especially prone to burnout
The myth of the wounded healer
Impact of training and practice on therapists' lives
Positive impact of the profession on the therapist's family
Negative impact of the profession on the therapist's family
Vicarious traumatization
Vicarious traumatization with sexually abused clients
Psychotherapists' self-care
Ethical guidelines regarding self-care
Protection of clients from ethical violations due to burnout or impairment
Incompetence due to burnout or impairment
Preventing burnout: The professional front
Preventing burnout: The personal front
Preventing burnout: The art of balancing
Bibliography
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The paper also attends to the hazards posed to the practitioner's family, which include emotional drain, danger of over-interpretation, distancing, using psychological jargon, inability to let go of the therapists' mode at home. Finally, the paper uses Maslach' (1986), as "a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who work with people in some capacity" and outlines how it can be avoided by finding ways to balance personal and professional lives of therapists and employ a variety of other means to prevent burnout. 
