Bathhouse Counseling, or the Relevance of Psychoanalytic Interventions in Clinical Social Work

The present article explores ways in which psychoanalytic theory and technique can help clinical social workers and psychoanalytic clinicians face some of the challenges of working with difficult-toaccess populations. It addresses how to bridge gaps in mental health services by doing culturally sensitive mental health outreach to specific vulnerable communities. The article addresses clinical competencies, and how we can strengthen them with psychoanalytic theory to reach out to marginalized populations considered "difficult to reach." Specifically, this article examines the experience of providing mental health counseling in male bathhouses, using psychoanalytic theory to support a single-session counselingmodel geared to decreasing the risk of HIV transmissions among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex withmen (MSM).