The Associated Press
Medical Ethicist Disciplined for Affair With Patient
Dateline: LEBANON, N.H.
December 22, 1992

A psychiatrist once billed as “Captain Ethics” has been expelled by the American Psychiatric Association for allegedly having sex with a patient.

Dr. Charles Culver, who helped found the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College, was investigated by the association after complaints by his former wife and a former patient, the Valley News of Lebanon reported Saturday.

Culver was a psychiatrist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center before moving to Argentina in January. In a ruling released earlier this month, the association said he had “a personal relationship develop with a patient that was inconsistent with an effective therapeutic relationship.”

The association wouldn’t elaborate other than to say Culver violated a rule that forbids psychiatrists from “gratifying his or her own needs by exploiting the patient.”

It was unclear if the woman was the same ex-patient who filed the complaint.

Expulsion from the association effectively means Culver can’t practice psychiatry in the United States because no state will license him. He already had surrendered his New Hampshire license.

Culver, who lives in La Plata, Argentina, with his fourth wife, did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Dartmouth philosophy professor Bernard Gert, the co-author with Culver of the book “Philosophy in Medicine,” said he was surprised by the expulsion, which he called “completely inappropriate.”

Dr. Paul Gerber, a doctor in internal medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, said Culver “really began the field of medical ethics.”

“If he fell in love with an ex-patient, that’s a mistake,” he said. “But if he had sex with a current patient, that’s tragic and crazy.”

The president of the New Hampshire Psychiatric Society, Edward Rowan, said Monday that Culver’s relationship with the woman apparently started when he had stopped treating her, but that it continued after treatment resumed.

Culver edited a book called “Ethics at the Bedside,” a series of case studies in medical ethics. He was profiled in 1987 by The Wall Street Journal, which called him a “pioneer practitioner” of medical ethics and nicknamed him “Captain Ethics.”

In 1989, Culver’s former wife, Karen Nordstrom, filed a complaint with the New Hampshire Psychiatric Society accusing Culver of having sex with a former patient. The society recommended that the national association expel Culver.

Nordstrom, a psychiatric nurse who also teaches medical ethics, said she learned of Culver’s behavior in 1987.

She said he admitted the behavior and they immediately separated. In May 1988, she said she learned he again had become involved with the woman.

“I was incredibly disturbed that he continued to preach a certain practice of ethics while he was personally unwilling to practice it,” she said.