I think there's some truth to this, yeah. It's an odd, unnatural kind of relationship. It requires a lot of self-disclosure and trust in someone we barely know anything about, may never know much about. It's not like an ordinary relationship between two people, where self-disclosure is mutual and builds gradually, and no one is expected to just let it all hang out with no reciprocation from the other. How could you expect people not to get intensely curious?

Personally, I think the searching I did do seemed to quell the itch to find out more and more...I found some pretty mundane, unremarkable stuff, and even though I may never know this person like a friend, I guess what I did find was enough to give me the impression that she's just a person, take away some of the mystique and relax about it.

As for the difference between information searching and stalking, I'd say it's a matter of how readily, publicly available the information is. There was an example in the other thread of someone being deceptive about who they are to get friended on Facebook and view information that is not public. That would be crossing the line. If the same person had made that info public on Facebook, then fair enough as far as I'm concerned.

I also think there are kind of two different questions here: what is ethical to do to the therapist and what is healthy for the patient, and if the OP is having intense feelings about this they're worth talking about even if no real ethical line has been crossed.