It finally happened... I have profiles on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, Technorati, Ning, Squidoo, XING, Answers.Yahoo, GodTube, MySpace, Yedda, Furl, Blogger, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Yelp, and Google Talk, to name a few. Most of these I hardly use. Some of them I've been on once to create the account and only remember it when I receive newsletters in my email inbox, which I then unceremoniously delete. My students and colleagues have been finding me online for a few years now, so I'm used to getting the occasional "friend request" from someone I teach or work with. However, last week I received a Facebook friend request from Cecil, a 20-something British-American therapy client*. I immediately considered declining the request, but stopped short. "I am trying to establish trust and rapport with Cecil," I thought. "If I decline his request to join such a non-exclusive network, could it harm our therapeutic rapport?" Truly, I would accept a friend … [Read more...]