Accidentally finding out very personal info about your therapist

No, definitely not anything unethical he did in the past. Just intensely private and personal, and HIGHLY inappropriate for a therapist to show to a client.

That's good! I thought you said it was something that could result in disciplinary action, but I somehow misunderstood.

I was saying that sharing it with a client could result in disciplinary action. Easy to see how that could be unclear though, sorry.

I would just keep it to myself and never tell the T that I know. I don't think that is intrusion but I would consider discussing it very intrusive. I would not also be quite upset if a client or colleague brought up something very personal about me that I did not choose to share. If the knowledge affected my ability to work with the T, I would rather leave and find someone else; can't see how revealing that I know would make that different anyway.

Now I'm really wondering what kind of self-disclosure would lead to disciplinary action. My therapist disclosed something to me that I was very surprised that he chose to disclose because it was very personal, but it was entirely relevant to what I was sharing with him and he chose to disclose this to me so there would be no question of him judging me negatively for what I was talking about. I would think that self-disclosure is up to the individual therapist's judgement about what would be beneficial for the client. Do therapist's governing bodies really have hard and fast rules about self-disclosure?

It could be a tricky situation. Obviously the politics within a research group (or between research groups) aren't your responsibility to manage, but I would assume that the friend is one of several authors. While everyone who has authorship on a paper has certain ethical responsibilities, in practice it's complicated.
Idk how much of this you already know, it sounds like you're pretty familiar with academia? So I might be telling you stuff you already know.

Idk the field that this paper is in or what the norms are, but like in my field I could be an author on a paper because I handled one part of the work but not have had anything to do with other parts, and in terms of authority and influence it could be tricky and delicate to try to tell a more senior researcher that there was an issue with part of their paper that was their responsibility.
The concern might be heard more effectively if taken directly to the person who's considered to have the most general/overall responsibility and control, either the corresponding author or the first author

LOL! I spewed coffee all over my keyboard when I read this!

Maybe I am missing something but why does this even need to enter the therapeutic process? What are you trying to accomplish? To warn him that something about him is OUT THERE? Doesn't he already know this?

Hmm...maybe I need to drink some coffee, speaking of coffee....

Thanks so much for this thorough, helpful post--I'm pretty familiar with academia, but it's really useful to have this reminder of how different the norms can be in different fields, since this researcher is in a very different discipline than mine and the politics of this particular research team aren't familiar to me.

I think I've been able to get the information where it needs to go through the channels available to me--it seems like my coworker's friend is in fact the person who (should have) handled the minutiae of making sure the subjects' details were properly disguised, in addition to being the lead author. Now I'm crossing my fingers waiting to hear back, and hoping the information is taken seriously and in the spirit with which it was given.

In my field, this kind of privacy breach would basically be considered an emergency. Heck, if it were my paper and someone contacted me concerned that they'd IDed a human subject, I'd change the details even if I knew they couldn't possibly be correct. Let alone if there were any chance at all that they were right.

I found out that my ts wife had a miscarriage. at that time ts mood and affect changed. he admitted my perceptions of him we're accurate although he did not mention why

I did not bring up what I knew. it didn't feel helpful for me or for him to say what I knew. I simply knew and kept it to myself, and focused on ts mood change and how it affected me and my therapy

t ended up taking time off. I have never told him that I know why

Wow, that's an incredibly difficult situation for you to be in. If you tell him, the research project could be compromised and at the very least, the family member's so called "anonymity" will be removed. On the other hand, he's your therapist and if it's going to impede your therapy, then you have to do what's best for you. It's a toughy.