A couple of weeks ago a thoughtful suggestion appeared regarding presenting
clinical material here:
I would like to suggest something that may be used,in order to
prevent any clinical material diffusion from breaking ethical codes.

 l. The material and all information accessible and questions would be sent
by private e-mail from the interested professional to someone in the List
( the coordinator of it probably );

 2. The coordinator would make a resume, not mentioning the sender nor giving
any personal details about the client or the analyst, and would sent it to
the
List under a specific name and number;

 3. The members of the List would discuss it freely during some specific time
or under specific and limited number of messages for each one;

 4. Any further material the analyst would like to give or ask could be
possible acting as in 1. & 2.;

 4. The only remaining security pocedure would be that names shouldn't be
mentioned in any conditions.The professional ( indirectly ) and the
coordinator would have entire responsability and domain of the discussion
itself, stopping it as soon as they should consider neccessary;

 5. The coordinator, at the end of the group discussion could give a
feedback to the List with the returned answers from the original sender.


 Of course, if each one of us all improve the method, something may come.
 We have used this in ambients of low level security and it is has worked
well.

 "Somewhere between the specific that has no meaning and the general that
has no content there must be, for each purpose and at each level of
abstraction,
an optimum degree of generality. K. Boulding "


 Regards, Osmar.
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As good as Osmars ideas are I can neither help with his suggestion nor
support it as leader of this forum. First, there is the simple problem of
the quantity of work involved. While this may seem a straight forward task,
those of you who have read the literature on protecting the confidentiality
of patients whose cases are published know that there are many complications
not only in ensuring the patient's privacy but also in ensuring that the
transcriber does not inadvertently introduce significant distortion in the
material. Second, many laws govern the confidentiality of mental health
records and many associations have rules regarding their publications. I
personally am unwilling to risk violating those rules by assisting in
preparing materials for wide circulation. The American Psychoanalytic
Association's current recommendation on this matter is that the
responsbility is with the treating analyst to ensure that no harm comes to
the patient by way of publication. A third party cannot assume the
responsbility. I wish I knew a better solution, but until one is found I
think we are basically in an extremely difficult situation.

Robert M. Galatzer-Levy, M.D.   Owner psychoan list
122 South Michigan Avenue       Telphone 312 922 5077
Suite 1407
Chicago, Illinois 60603

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