Yes, it's a case study. But it's a case study chosen deliberately to try to cast a very gray area as black and white.

First of all, how many clients overturn furniture? Odds are this is not the typical client that the scenario of termination/abandonment happens to. The client has been chosen to elicit sympathy for the psychologist in the reader. Easy to identify with him, not so easy to identify with Jessica.

I don't disagree that a therapist who cannot help a client should refer them on. But the case study has other illuminations about the profession:

- they're eight sessions in. We as clients are told therapy takes time, a long time, keep coming back! But a therapist can give up on a client two months in?
- it would have been a much more effective article had Jessica's viewpoint been included more, or if we learned what happened to her (and she's okay). But it is all about the doctor and the reassurance provided him by the ethics board. Which kind of suggests that to the APA establishment it is not about the client - it is about protecting the profession.