[doodleman]

I'm having a hard time Googling to find advice for this particular situation.

Person A and Person B are in an intimate relationship.
Person A is in therapy.
Person A receives an email from Person B.
Person A would like to discuss the email with Person A's therapist.
Is it OK for Person A to forward the email to Person A's therapist without prior permission form Person B?

I can find links that address in general forwarding another person's email without their permission.
I am trying to find an answer that is specific to the therapy situation.

Any info or thoughts would be appreciated.
Any reference to some kind of "best practice" or "industry standard" answer would help a lot.

[Perna]

I do not think it is ever all right to discuss person B's business with a third person, whether therapist or not. If you want to "use" person B's email in your therapy, ask Person B if that is all right.

[unaluna]

In 2007 somebody wrote a paper about it. Not about therapy, but about making copies of private letters and to whom did they belong. I think he would say you could print off the email and bring it to session to discuss, but not forward it or in any other way make a copy of it for your t. You could probably bring it up on your phone for your t to read, or sign on to your t's computer at their office. In the latter case, maybe a case could be made that a copy then exists but that would be cutting it pretty fine I think. It's the content that is copywrighted to person b.

ETA: whenever my mother writes me a letter, I bring it straight to my t's office. I'm not going to ask her permission.

[tinyrabbit]

I would be inclined to print it off and take it to the session.

[murray]

Hmmm...it never occurred to me that I couldn't forward emails to my T or even my attorney. I have done so a number of times and neither has ever suggested that it wasn't appropriate.

[hamster-bamster]

This is so bizarre that you would even have this question!

The reason that legal and other privileged communications, as well as internal corporate news announcements in publicly held companies that come before external earnings calls have that awfully long and harsh sounding advisory that explains that the communications are intended for the recipients ONLY and may not be forwarded is because otherwise you are free to forward whatever you want!

And the T has a duty of confidentiality so the T would not disclose anything unless person B expressly announces his or her suicidal or homicidal plans.

I can see how you might owe a duty of extra privacy protection to an underage child who cannot insert the "awfully long and harsh sounding advisory" mentioned above... maybe. But still, T is confidential. Forwarding emails is the most convenient way to communicate with T's who agree to communicate via email and I do it all the time. Plus, it saves trees (unlike printing out). But since in your hypothetical, person B is already in an intimate relationship, that rules out the possibility that person B is a minor.

The same goes for emails to attorney, as Murray pointed out. The communications with attorneys are private, too.

How would the T proceed without knowing about third parties in your life? Any time you are discussing anything beyond the strictly internal process of self-discovery, you are discussing your relationships with third parties, and to enable you to discuss such relationships, the T's are obligated to keep the facts about third parties confidential (there are other reasons for their duty to protect your privacy as well).

Since you are asking for best practices and industry standards...

... in corporations, the standard for corporate email content is the following:

- If you do not want to see your email printed on the front page of the NYT some day, do not send it.

Private email is different from corporate email, but since you are forwarding person B's emails to the T and not to the NYT's editorial board, you should be OK. Oh, and it is actually OK to forward it to the NYT's editorial board because NYT's internal standards would prevent the NYT from publishing a private email. So you are fine.