This week, a former student told me that her therapist says to her at the end of most sessions, “Can I give you a hug?” The student, a woman, guarantees that there is no sexual motivation, which I accept. The woman does not want to hug the therapist for reasons she does not understand. If only she had a relationship with a benign but curious guide who could create a space with her in which her associations and reactions to the idea of hugging her therapist could be explored. Nah.
My colleagues initiate hugs with their students; I do not. I refuse to believe that my colleagues initiate hugs with their therapy patients, so I am distinguishing two separate issues, the hugging of patients and the hugging of others. And of course, there are many kinds of hugs—the quasi-sexual hug of women in my social life I find attractive; the warm, loving hug of friends and relatives (my boys especially); the all-around hug reserved only for Janna; the make-the-hurt-go-away hug that I never give (I’ve been a therapist too long for that); the congratulatory hug; and so on.
With former students, there may come a time when we are socializing rather than revisiting our student-teacher relationship. These people I hug, but only if it’s mutual. As I said to my son when he asked me about kissing girls in middle school, you lean forward and if she leans forward, you keep leaning forward, but if she leans back, you lean back. To me, a hug has to be mutual, so when a male friend extends his hand at the end of the evening, I shake it. Other friends of mine parry the hand and move in. I don’t like this, even if the other person is a good-looking woman.
I admit I’m a prude outside of my sex life. I hate it when people leer at strangers, turn unsuspecting students into sex objects, or impose on other people’s tact to get a quick feel of someone’s waist or shoulder. There are several beautiful women in my life, and with them I prefer the head hug, where the primary contact and pressure of intimacy is carried by the sides of our heads. It’s not just that I don’t want to be seen as a lecher, although there is that; it is also that I identify with the woman, and I hate it when people I don’t want sexually kiss me on the mouth or press themselves against me.
I don’t see how a hug can be mutual when one person dictates that it will happen. If one party has power over the other, as in a teaching relationship, then the more powerful person’s initiation of a hug will almost always be dictatorial, because even if the student wants a hug, they can’t have made a choice. And once the hug is described as imposed, it’s pretty unappealing. I was upset when one of my kids in first grade told me that on Valentine’s Day, you had to give everyone or no one a card. Like T-ball for love, no one should ever feel bad (or correct their behavior to get what they want). Later, he was told that at the first dance in middle school, you had to accept if someone asked you to dance. I wonder whether they would have imposed that rule on homosexual offers.
But in therapy, it’s much less complicated whether to hug, and much more complicated when it happens. The whole idea of therapy is to create an exploratory space in which things are discussed rather than enacted. Different schools explain the reasons for this differently: extinction of punished behaviors, discovery of hidden identity elements, teaching reflection and metacommunication as conflict resolution strategies, for example. But the key element is analysis rather than action. A hug defeats the whole structure and purpose of therapy. Therapists who don’t understand that should be daycare workers—or prostitutes, who also provide a useful service by exchanging bodily contact for money.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 
Great post – made me want to hug you! The older I am, the more I believe that many of the basic tenets of psychotherapy that I learned early on are actually quite profound, including the idea that when you talk about something you are no longer compelled to act it out. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way. But I do hope our students understand that one premise of psychotherapy is exploring issues so that choices are made consciously. (To use your terms, analysis rather than action, then analysis leading to different action.) I find the idea of conscious choice so empowering.
I could not agree more. I have a little difficulty with “choice,” but reflection before reaction is a good strategy for keeping our behavior controlled by actual occasioning environments rather than by our first impression of them.
This made me think. I have one young (20-year-old female) client who will sometimes initiate a hug. I am a new comer to the field and when she requested this it caught me off guard. I have given her the hug the past three times she has asked for it, but I wonder about how this might play out in our therapy.
It will play out in your therapy in all sorts of unproductive ways, but I’d be more worried how it will play out in your board complaint. Next time she asks for a hug, you can tell her you feel like you are in a lose-lose situation, because if you don’t hug her, she might experience it as a rejection, which you don’t want, but if you do hug her, it will continue to send a message that there is a non-reflecting way of relating that somehow diminishes the reflective work you are doing, which you also don’t want. Identifying lose-lose situations is itself reflective and promotes metacommunication and reflectiveness in patients.