deliver such training. External experts in telecommunications engineering with specialised knowledge of security issues should be involved. ● Adopt a policy of reviewing the confidentiality of telecommunications in psychoanalysis every two years. Given the rapid pace of developments in this area and the difficulty of anticipating their impact on analytic practice, such reviews will be necessary. The results should be communicated to all members. ● As our internal expertise increases, in the future consider initiating outreach activities in collaboration with other psychoanalytic professional groups, to help raise awareness of the risks to confidentiality associated with the ever-increasing use of telecommunications by practitioners. ● Actively encourage analysts who offer remote services to hire appropriate technical expertise for the setting up and the maintenance of their computer and telecommunication systems. ● Seek appropriate specialist technical advice about cybersecurity to inform and review future policy development. 9.3 Third party requests for a breach of confidentiality ● We recommend that the default assumption within the IPA be that members have ‘discretionary privilege’ with respect to their psychoanalytic work. The who, how, and why of any request by a third party for a breach in confidentiality should be considered primarily as a matter for clinical decision and ethical judgment by the individual analyst, based on what best protects the patient and the integrity of treatment. ● We further recommend that the IPA give institutional recognition and support to the analyst’s right to conscientious objection whenever third parties request that an analyst breach confidentiality. Support could take a number of forms, including legal support, as is detailed in Section 5 above. 9.4 Colleagues against whom a complaint has been made In our view, the current protection of the confidentiality of members found in the Ethics Code , sections IV.A6 and IV.B8, when a complaint has been made to the IPA Ethics Committee and a decision has not yet been reached, is adequate. 9.5 Patients’ access to process notes ● We recommend that analysts inform themselves in detail about the legal situation in their jurisdiction with respect to a patient’s ownership of and rights of access to material about him- or herself, while bearing in mind that the general trend globally is to extend patients' access to all information kept about them, including private notes. The situation varies so much from jurisdiction to jurisdiction that we cannot offer general recommendations.
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