R. House links to papers and books on psychotherapy professionalisation

The Professionalisation of Counselling and Psychotherapy,
A collection of papers by Dr Richard House

A TALE OF TWO CONFERENCES:
organisational form and accreditation ethos
This is the story of two conferences, which could hardly have been more different from one another, and I hope that this brief, impressionistic piece will throw some light upon the issue of accreditation - which has received wide coverage in recent numbers of this journal - particularly in terms of the way in which the very structure and form of a gathering of practitioners can tell us a great deal about the tacit assumptions about and orientations towards the dynamics of accreditation and its shadow, discreditation.
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'Audit-mindedness' in counselling:
some underlying dynamics
I argue that the preoccupation with 'quantity' and measurability that typifies 'objective' counselling outcome studies reflects, at least in part, the disintegrative splitting process that pervades technocratic culture, and which is in turn rooted in the pathological aspects of early developmental experience. get article
The Dynamics of Professionalisation:
a personal view on counselling research
In the past few years, the field of counselling has been moving towards a more self-confident professional status, and there are many aspects of this process which are to be welcomed - not least because it helps to enhance the credibility of counsellors working in a variety of settings. In this article, however, I want to express some personal reservations about this process, and about the form that moves towards professionalisation are taking in the counselling field.get aticle
The Professionalization of Counselling: a coherent 'case against?'
'I focus on two of the taken-for-granted-assumptions under pinning the conventional wisdom of professionalization...that stricter controls are necessary to protect the public.... that it's possible to generate, or even guarantee competent practice via training and top down accreditation and registration procedures'get article
THE DYNAMICS OF POWER:
why Mowbray is right about
professionalisation
....like many others in the humanistic field, I too have previously been politically naive enough to assume the arguments against professionalising a field centred on human development and healing to be so self-evident and overwhelming that no-one with any degree of integrity or understanding of the nature of personal growth could countenance even for a moment the kinds of extraordinary changes that have been occurring in recent years. How wrong we have all been,....get article
REVIEW ARTICLE
NHS counselling and neo-conservative ideology
In a recently published polemical tract (called a 'research report') from the right-wing free market Social Affairs Unit, the view that counselling constitutes an effective form of health care intervention is disdainfully rejected. Harris's monograph is so replete with unsubstantiated innuendo, and grossly distorted and ill-informed analysis masquerading as 'fact', that it is quite frankly difficult if not impossible to treat it seriously.... get article
REGISTRATION IS DEAD!... LONG LIVE REGISTRATION?...
- a sympathetic review article'
Richard Mowbray, The Case Against Psychotherapy Registration: A Conservation Issue for the Human Potential Movement,
This is a deeply disquieting book. It is also a brilliant and much-needed book. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone who is in any way involved in, or concerned with, the professionalisation of the counselling and psychotherapy fields in Britain, and in my view marks a pivotal moment in the development of the humanistic/human potential movement both in Britain and beyond. get article
Psychopathology as ideology: a review article
Ian Parker and others, Deconstructing Psychopathology, Sage, London, 1995, 167 pp, ISBN (paperback) 0 8039 7481 7, price £11.95
Essentially, what Parker er al. do in their book Deconstructing Psychopathology (hereafter, DP) is deconstructively to analyse the notion of 'psychopathology' through the language and institutions that hold it in place, subjecting it in the process to a withering and unrelenting philosphical critique, and then to suggest alternative, philosophically sustainable and fundamentally more human(e) ways of conceptualising the experience of emotional difficulty and distress.get article
'Diagnosing' the growth of counselling:
a qualified defence'
In the August edition of Counselling, Consultant Psychiatrist Raj Persaud detailed at some length his own unease about the growth of counselling. In what follows I offer a detailed response to his arguments; and while there are some significant points of agreement between us, ultimately, and as I will try to show, Persaud's analysis is based on an inadequate understanding of the nature and assumptive base of counselling get article
From professionalisation towards a post-therapy era'
Rather than rehearse here the plethora of arguments that have been made against what might be called 'didactic professionalisation', I believe that a formidable case against registration as a general principle (whether statutory or voluntary) can convincingly be made in a few paragraphs. get article
'Counselling savaged by Rottweiller'! - a critical report on 'Watchdog', BBC 1 Television, Monday 26th February 1996, 7.30 p.m.'
Both the frequency and the ferocity of attacks upon the fields of counselling and psychotherapy have been mounting apace in recent years, and the BBC 'Watchdog' programme of 26th February was a particularly virulent and nasty strain of this phenomenon. get article
The Case Against Psychotherapy Registration:
A Conservation Issue for the Human Potential Movement
Richard Mowbray'
Mowbray is motivated by a profound unease with trends towards 'bureaucratic professionalisation' currently pre-occupying our field, and in this meticulously documented monograph, he sets out a formidable battery of arguments that not only thoroughly undermine the case for (statutory) registration, but actually suggest how such a process may well actually do positive harm to the field. get article
PROFESSIONAL vs. VOCATIONAL TRAINING
IN COUNSELLOR DEVELOPMENT'
Along with many humanistic practitioners I have become increasingly concerned in recent times at the intemperate and uncritical stampede into the 'academicisation' of counselling (and psychotherapy) trainings. The distasteful and unedifying spectacle of training organisations falling over each other in the scramble to ally themselves with the burgeoning university sector surely has little if anything to do with the promotion of higher standards of counselling practice, and everything to do with a practitioner- and 'training-business'-get article
Review Article
In the wake of 'Watchdog'... Whither professionalisation now?'
The recent 'Watchdog' attack on counselling owed much more to tabloid newspaper sensationalism that it did to serious journalistic debate. I was deeply angered by the programme - not so much because of the prejudice-reinforcing effect it will no doubt have on those strands of public opinion already predisposed to discrediting what we do, but because of the knee-jerk response it will probably evoke from counselling organisations, in terms of tighter recognition and entry requirements, still more vocal calls for the statutory regulation of the 'profession', and so on.
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