4.07 Use of Confidential Information for Didactic or Other Purposes
Psychologists do not disclose in their writings, lectures, or other public media, confidential, personally identifiable information concerning their clients/patients, students, research participants, organizational clients, or other recipients of their services that they obtained during the course of their work, unless (1) they take reasonable steps to disguise the person or organization, (2) the person or organization has consented in writing, or (3) there is legal authorization for doing so.

Also, let me plug Heather’s first novel, you can check it out on her site http://heatherrolland.com/finders_seekers_losers_keepers which also includes my review-blurb, “A mystery of the heart with a ‘garage band’ feel…”

Curious how often if ever conflict of interest issues arise in this. It seems that you’d have to avoid novelizing any issue relevant to your therapy sessions or be sued for violating doctor-patient confidentiality by patients who read your novels and believe that, say, a divorce in a novel is based on their own experiences as told to you. I’m not saying that that would be a reasonable outcome, but it seems like a possible one.

Obviously off-topic; sorry for that!

As a novelist, I couldn’t agree more with your conclusion: that labeling behavior as diagnosis may divert attention away from a life – a story. Life is complex and messy, full of functionality within dysfunction and vice versa. To equate treatment with elimination of problematic behavior is to potentially miss the richness. Note, though, that I do qualify my agreement: pathologizing specific behaviors may take attention (the therapist’s and the client’s) away from life to obsessively focus upon behavior. I see it as part of being a therapist to make sure that this doesn’t happen – to go for the whole story and seek to define health (or completion of treatment anyway!) as something more than simply eliminating a behavior, regardless of diagnosis or reimbursement, or any other distraction that gets thrown in my path.

Restart@netaddictionrecovery.com

It seems we agree THAT people are suffering from how they use technologies, that is beyond dispute. But WHAT is making them suffer remains an open question and is a very real disagreement between us.

I actually believe using “addiction” as a diagnosis for when someone gets trapped by this or that technology does more harm then good. It shifts the focus of attention from the suffering individual or family to the behavior and the tools used in those behaviors. Addiction diagnoses leads to one-size fits all intervention programs rather than individually working to understand and treat the unique pattern of anxiety, depression, avoidance, affect dysregulation, and impulse-control issues present in each case.

In my experience, the focus is wrong when “addiction” is used. An addiction-based approach to treatment focusses attention on getting someone away from the keyboard; the clinical approach I advocate focusses attention on getting someone back into the specific, local actualities of their life.