Reimagining “multiple relationships” in psychotherapy

Promoting decolonial and liberation psychologies (DLPs) requires psychologists to critically interrogate taken-for-granted assumptions pertaining to psychotherapy relationships. One fruitful area of interrogation surrounds conceptualizations and practices concerning multiple relationships (MRs), wherein a psychologist and client share another form of relationship outside of the psychotherapy context. The prevention or minimization of MRs is widely viewed as an ethical imperative, codified within professional ethics codes and further encouraged through insurance and liability practices. From the standpoint of DLPs, the profession has not adequately grasped the extent to which psychotherapy relationships reflect individualistic selves that facilitate psychologists' serving, however unwittingly, as "handmaidens of the status quo." We present three practitioner testimonios from among our authors-Indigenous, Muslim, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and other sexual/gender minorities-to concretely demonstrate how the professional and ethical framing around this ubiquitous practice within psychology has served to flatten human relationships within a colonizing frame. We then discuss three problematic assumptions concerning MRs that are reflected in the American Psychological Association's Ethics Code. We offer communal selfhood, a theoretical framework that aligns with DLPs, as a potential space for understanding and reframing MRs. We conclude with general recommendations for conceptualizing therapeutic relationships without recourse to a problematic conceptualization of MRs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · African cultural and philosophical studies · Community Health and Development · Psychology

• Uncontested ideas and real-world consequences

  Open Access•D Thomas, Val Thomas et al.•Theory and Society•2026

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