Do you think a therapist could have a crush on his/her patient?

Of course. Although, the other way around is much more common.

It does happen, but a good therapist is well aware that tit can happens and doesn’t act on it. but it is more likely the client, in what is called transference, perceives the therapist’s interest and attention and lack of expressing judgment about the client as romantic interest. The client will often develop a strong emotional bond with the therapist.

A good therapist know this happens and uses it to the client’s advantage to get the client to feel safe and open up more.

It is part and parcel of the therapeutic process, and was recognized and defined by Freud in 1910.

The patient transfers romantic feelings towards the therapist and vice versa.

Countertransference

”...defined as redirection of a psychotherapist’s feelings toward a client—or, more generally, as a therapist’s emotional entanglement with a client.”

No ethical therapist will ever act on it, in theory.

It certainly happens. I have a friend who married her therapist, well after the therapy was terminated, she swears: they stayed married for 55 years.

It can happen, but is not likely to be acted on. If serious, the therapist would transfer the patient to another practitioner.

In the sixties, my psychiatrist divorced his wife and married a patient. Likely the same thing still happens.

Often a professional therapist will suggest a patient should change to someone else.

A one-time friend of mine, a divorced woman, did have an affair with her therapist. She talked about him giddily for months before anything happened. I honestly thought the whole thing was her fantasy until she showed me pictures—and asked me to stay with her kids overnight while she kept a rendezvous with him.

The affair ended when the therapist’s wife asked to meet with my friend. Kindly but firmly, she told my friend that she was welcome to her husband, as long as she also wanted to run his errands, iron his shirts, put up with his moods, etc. Essentially she said, help yourself, but if you do, you have to take the whole package and not just the fun parts.

My friend woke up—and found another therapist.

She also admitted to liking the wife, who wasn’t the vixen she’d been painted as.

It didn’t occur to me then, but now I think maybe the wife had already dealt with the same situation a time or two.