Unexpected clinical features of the Tarasoff decision: the therapeutic alliance and the "duty to warn"

Abstract

The authors present a case report and discuss the clinical effects of the Tarasoff decision on the therapy of a potentially violent patient. They emphasize that the patient's ambivalence toward the intended victim can be used to foster the therapeutic alliance. The therapist's legal duty to the victim and therapeutic duty to the patient, they assert, can then be synergistically applied with an unexpected benefit: the patient's capacity to make choices is enhanced.