Andrew Cook
What kind of regulatory framework do we really want to work in? A personal response to compulsory state regulation.
...The DoH/NHS is a large and powerful enough institution to be able to attempt to change realities which it finds inconvenient - I am really not convinced that it should be allowed to do so. If the NHS wishes to define the training standards which it imposes on its employees, then it can easily do so by internal policy decision - there is absolutely no need to impose this arrangement on everyone else by Act of Parliament...
More
|
Darian Leader
Psychological Therapies Consultation
...psychoanalytic therapy [ ] does not involve a 'product' or a 'service', and hence the NOS aim of "ensuring that the products are quality assured and fit for purpose" finds no immediate application.. Psychoanalytic therapy is different precisely because it rejects the ideology of service provision, and this is one of the reasons it proves attractive to many those who seek to embark on it.
More |
Julia Evans
Some comments on the Health Professions’ Council’s ‘In Focus’ circulation (issue 8 – December 2006)
...In the Donaldson Report, the Health Industry is defined (on no evidence) as a high-risk industry. The examples of Alpha-Piper Disaster in the oil industry, Chernobyl in the nuclear industry and pilot error in the aircraft industry are used as a basis for action in the 'health industry'. So processes used by health professionals in their interactions with other human beings - the service users - are being compared with processes used by machine operators - yes an aircraft is a machine - when correcting machine malfunctions. The subjectivity or individuality of the human beings involved is foreclosed - both parties have to behave to machine-like rules which are defined by the HPC.
More |
Guy Gladstone
STOP State Regulation of Counselling and Psychotherapy
...To date the lobby for SR has largely avoided engagement with the argument,[against] as if they recognised their project would not stand up to the test of open debate, instead pressing ahead behind the scenes while claiming to represent an (invisible) consensus...
...In particular the SR lobby has tried to obscure from view the shifting of the goalposts from statutory registration to state regulation, aware that this is a much more contentious destination that entails a serious surrender of professional independence. It is the growing rumblings of discontent over this sleight of hand that give grounds for believing that a focused campaign at this juncture could shift opinion once and for all against an encroachment of state power into the psychological domain...
More
|
Jill Hall, Sue Hart and Grace Lindsay
Some suggestions for resisting state regulation of Counselling and Psychotherapy
...We need to really face how we can bring on ourselves something which will take the whole field in an inappropriate direction. It will become an academic subject of study, moving towards the medical model which we have spent the last 30 or so years trying to move away from. The whole humanistic movement was inspired by a recognition of the need to break away from that and go beyond it.
Do we really want to land ourselves with the necessary (unnecessary!) requirement to gain BAxs and MAxs. SR will push towards just that...
More
|
Paul Barber
Keeping Psychotherapy Trainees in "Their Place" - How Training Institutions can Stifle Love and Breed Compliance
In this article I first review major critiques of psychotherapy we have received over the years; introduce principles I associate with healthy psychotherapy; list the ways shadow-driven behaviors can flower in training institutions that forsake healthy principles; before considering what the shadow of psychotherapy and its training may be 'selling' its clients and trainees at a subliminal and shadow level.
...As a supervisor and community facilitator in my time to several training institutions, some humanistic others psychodynamic, I have ceased to be amazed by how many organizations simultaneously undermine the principles they espouse. Fermenting conditions that promote the exact opposite of their formally stated intentions, such bodies informally end up acting against everything they formally hold dear...
More |
