It is possible as we have seen with the advice columns to help one side at the expense of the other, but the fact is that if you do such a thing then you are creating a new problem. You are creating a problem with the other side. The problem may never come back to you. You may never suffer from it and you may indeed help your client under such circumstances. But the world is certainly not going to be a better place as a result of your activity.

This is always a problem with psychology in which you may fix up one problem at the expense of another one or you may create a new problem as you are fixing up another problem. Indeed, this is a consideration with some psychologists who may feel it may be better not to fix up a problem but to leave the problem as it is rather than to risk creating another problem to replace the existing one.

There is a certain amount of security in knowing the problems that you have and in having the experience over the course of time in dealing with them for better or for worse, with or without assistance. Creating a new problem means that the old problem may or may not exist to various degrees but now we have an unknown problem because there is no way of predicting which problem will replace it.

In other words, if there is an underlying cause which has to surface in some way and that is the reason for the problem, then it will surface in an unpredictable way if you don't allow it to surface naturally.

A wiser thing would be to either find the underlying cause and the deepest underlying possible causes and to resolve that or else to give a great deal of thought to resolving an issue based upon the testimony of only one side and in so doing risking the possibility of creating a new problem with the other side.

Even if the other side does not create a problem, your own client will have the knowledge that he was able to fool society, fool the psychologist, fool the world by presenting an incorrect solution to a situation and resolving the problem in their own biased way and this can create an extremely dangerous precedent with your client, to say nothing of the potential for guilt in the future for having resolved the problem in an unfair manner.