In no more than 3,000 words you are required to complete an essay on ethical issues in the practice of counseling, by addressing the following question:
What are the two ethical issues which are likely to be the most concerning for you personally in your counseling work?

Include a discussion of:
1. why each is important in your counseling work, or likely to be so;
2. what contribution recent journal articles make to discussion of these issues;
3. having read and considered the relevant literature on these issues, discuss how you are likely to deal with each of the two issues.

Your essay should be written in the first person and should include a personal, reflective discussion, but should be scholarly and include a carefully selected …show more content…

A licensed psychologist, Silbertrust (2007) uses her experience as a client in psychotherapy to demonstrate the blurred difference between boundary crossing and boundary violation. At the lowest tide of her life, stressed with her mother’s death, followed by her acoustic neuroma requiring a major surgery, Silbertrust was lonely, desolate, and depressed. Her therapist had made hospital and home visits to her while she was bed ridden, disclosed her own smoking habit and likes for cats, to sooth her panic and brighten her day with compassion, though it was obvious that the therapist had crossed her professional boundary at a time boundary mattered less to her than the immediate benefits of Silbertrust. I agree that at times, certain boundary crossing could booster the morale of clients who are at the verge of breaking down. There were times when I felt the need to touch a student parent on her shoulder, or shed a few drops of tears with her, and the gracefulness of such altruistic desires seems indisputable. However, what is the difference between me and her friends, who would just react in the same way as I wanted to? Silbertrust has justified and appreciated her counsellor’s crossing the boundary when looking retrospectively. However, the problem of boundary violations lies in the difficulty for