Why I Love My Job

I attended a UPA Ethics workshop yesterday at the SLC Library (presented by Steve Behnke, director of the APA Ethics Office). As usual in these workshops, we discuss vignettes which involve conflicting principles or values--confidentiality vs. the duty to report child abuse, for example. One vignette Dr. Behnke presented was that of a Jewish female psych intern whose prospective patient is a neo-Nazi. Is the intern obligated to disclose that she is Jewish? Will she be able to work with a neo-Nazi? What if he finds out later in therapy that she is Jewish? Will it damage the therapeutic relationship? What is her ethical obligation in this instance?

One of the other attendees raised her hand and said, in gently accented English, that she was a Holocaust survivor as a child, and her very first patient as an intern during graduate school was the Utah head of Aryan Nations. "But he was not a big scary SS officer," she said, "and I was no longer a little child. He was a victim of child abuse himself, sad and trying to build himself up. The roles were different, and because I saw him that way, we were able to work together."

The presenter asked her what had happened if or when she informed the client that she was Jewish. "I asked him about it later," she said. "He figured it out in our first interview. He said when he told me what he was I didn't even flinch, and he knew that I would be able to handle his issues."

I love my colleagues. Every time I talk to them or listen to them they inspire me and remind me of why I do what I do.