G . O . R . I . L . L . A .

These screens are devoted to exposing and challenging the contradictions, fallacies and incongruities of the 'professionalisation' through which trade associations such as UKCP are attempting to colonise psycho-practice in the UK.

You'll find here a collection of articles, reviews, polemics, letters and pointers to valuable material elsewhere. Be sure to check out for recent additions and editorial comment.

If you know of, or have written articles on these matters, or want to blow the whistle on something...

• Registering psychotherapy as an institutional neurosis: or, compounding the estrangement between soul and world. article by Michael Whan, This eloquent and carefully argued article is a timely reminder of why statutory regulation of psychotherapy would be terminally damaging. That it comes from a senior member of one of UKCP's participating sections testifies also to the level of ambivalence about regulation in that organisation.
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• Shutting the door after the horse has bolted. article by Anna Sands, a client who has been through a depressingly counter-productive 'grievance' process writes about the muddle and insensitivity she came up against when her therapy went badly wrong
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• Open letter to Janet Boakes [UKCP chair] 'If you tell a VERY BIG PREPOSTEROUS LIE OFTEN ENOUGH AND LOUDLY ENOUGH you can fool most of the people most of the time'
  Petruska Clarkson details very comprehensively the anger, rage, hurt and damage that have arisen from her pursuit of complaints against UKCP and some of its member organisations.
  
  Petruska's chilling and deeply felt personal account will no doubt already have been dismissed as pathology. Not here. In tone, vigour and directness Petruska's 'voice' epitomises the wildness that the UKCP seeks to tame and domesticate.
  
  As others before her have found, the price of challenging highly collusive herd behaviour can be very high. Petruska details the ruinous damage she has suffered with sadness, fury, exasperation and not a shred of hatred. The message rings out loud and clear... that UKCP is willing to wreck the working life of anyone who threatens its progress to statutory salvation.
  
  Read it... but be patient... this is an internet text unmediated by the tidying of editors. It is book-length... it's uneven... it digresses and yet it shimmers and sparkles with exactly the life... the 'physis' as she calls it... that the hard hats of the UKCP training schools are busy crushing in their rush for market share.
  Contact Petrushka Clakson to read article
  
  
• THE PSYCHOTHERAPY BILL. A first draft of the Private Member's Bill to for the statutory regulation of Psychotherapy in the UK is out for consultation with the BCP, the UKCP, and the presumably the BPS and the BAC. Read a detailed, comprehensive, review of all of its provisions.
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• The place of psychotherapy and counselling in a healthy European social order: further commentary on Tantam and VanDeurzen article by Alex Howard
  Their hubris and arrogance is outrageous, dangerous. It deserves a passionate and alarmed response....'...Psychotherapywe are told, is 'a new paradigm for living' and will provide 'the replacement of old religious and spiritual values'
  
  
• The Professionalisation of Psychotherapy and Statutory Regulation
  article by Denis Postle
  a compilation of two illustrated talks given to the Bristol Psychotherapy Association and British Confederation of Psychotherapists
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• The Alchemists Nightmare: Gold into Lead, the annexation of psychotherapy in the UK article by Denis Postle A series of carefully researched arguments against psycho-practice professionalisation from The International Journal of Psychotherapy Vol 3, NO.1, 1998.
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• MORE GOLD INTO LEAD: Further observations from The Alchemists Lab U.K. Psychotherapy Developments in the 1990's article by Nick Owen
  'This articile is addressed to all who practice or are considering the practise of psychotherapy and related disciplines in the UK...'
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  Complaints and Grievances in Psychotherapy - Fiona Palmer Barnes
  review by Denis Postle 'This is a book about quality assurance, how to manage complaints and grievances.... the model it puts forward is retrospective - make a bad mistake, be found out, get struck off...'.
  
  
• How Does Your Garden Grow? article by Denis Postle A vigorous opponent of (psycho-practice) professionalisation, Denis Postle challenges Emmy van Deurzen's view of counselling as a garden that needs pruning and weeding out from Counselling News June 1997
  
  
• IMPLAUSIBLE PROFESSIONS: Arguments for Pluralism and Autonomy in Psychotherapy and Counselling edited by Richard House and Nick Totton. The contributors, many of them prominent in the field, throw into question many of the most taken-for-granted assumptions on which the 'professionalisation' and commodification of psychotherapy and counselling are based.
  Details and ordering information for this excellent book, a must for anyone interested in the current UK politics of psycho-practice.
  
  
• The Case Against Psychotherapy Registration: A Conservation Issue for the Human Potential Movement
  by Richard Mowbray
  Details and ordering information for this excellent book, a must for anyone interested in the current UK politics of psycho-practice.
  
  
• The Healing Word:
  its past, present, and future article by Thomas Szasz, Ph.D.
  In this article Szasz vigorously confronts the main-stream of psychotherapy, observing that "psychoanalysts (along with psychotherapists) sold their noble, but finanacially unprofitable, birthright for a mess of pottage, the fakery of psychodiagnostics and psychotherapy"
  In his characteristically acerbic style, Szasz insists that "there are a many authentic types of psychotherapies as there are authentic persons using words to help".
  An incisive account of how, as Szasz puts it, psychotherapy got into a mess, several stages worse in the US than the UK.... but we're getting there.
  
  
• The Role of the Humanistic Movement
  in the History of Psychology
  article by Frederick J. Wertz
  "Humanistic psychology is in crisis. Although well understood and respected by some, it is inadequately understood and dismissed by many". In this article Wertz patiently reviews a long list of psychology textbooks, concluding, among other things, that the lack of power, if not of influence, of humanistic psychology may be due to under-achieving in the area of institutional establishment
  
  
• Emancipatory therapeutic practice
  in a turbulent transmodern era:
  a work of retrieval article by MAUREEN O'HARA, Ph.D.
  This excellent article surveys the current state of psychotherapy in the US. Read about the appalling difficulties that arise for practitioners (and clients) as psychotherapy moves from a 'profession' to a 'service industry' delivering 'managed care'. This article first appeared in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology Vol.37 No.3, Summer 1997 pp7-33
  
  
• Review of 'The Case Against Psychotherapy Registration...' by Juliet Lamont, Gestalt Southwest Newsletter.
  
  
• Organic Growth Article by Richard Mowbray first published in Counselling News arguing that diversity, not uniformity, is healthier for the counselling profession in the long run
  
  
• 'Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: The Grand Leading the Bland' article by Professor R.M Young.
  This is my fourth set of reflections on the relations between professional organizations purporting to represent psychotherapy in Britain, the broadly-based and democratic United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and the elitist British Confederation of Psychotherapists, dominated by the British Psycho-Analytical Society.
  
  
• The Culture of British Psychoanalysis and Related Essays on Character and Morality and on The Psychodynamics of Psychoanalytic Organizations three articles by Professor R.M.Young ... three closely-linked essays.... focussed on the relationships between different organizations and constituencies in the broad psychoanalytic culture of Britain. Of the many examples considered, one has gained increasing prominence as events have unfolded: the relationship between the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and the British Confederation of Psychotherapists (BCP).
  
  
• 'The Messiness, Ambivalence and Conflict of Everyday Life' article by Professor R.M.Young More on the internal political styles of the UK psychoanalytical community
  
  
• Stealing the Flame article by Denis Postle and Jill Anderson about the prospect of psychotherapy professionalisation.
  
  
• In the Shadow of Accreditation article by David Wasdell A brilliant analysis of the psychodynamics of psychotherapy professionalisation. Long, but essential reading if you want a comprehensive overview.
  
  
• The Politics of Transference: an essay of the AHPP article by John Heron another fundamental critique of the fallacies and deficiencies of professionalisation. So far as I can tell, totally ignored by AHPP.
  
  
• Professionalisation: A Rebel View article by David Kalisch about the prospect of psychotherapy professionalisation.
  
  
• The Glacier Reaches Town article by Denis Postle responding to suggestions that human potential work is some kind of poor relation to psychotherapy
  
  
• The professionalisation of Counselling and psychotherapy Fifteen papers and articles by Dr Richard House Dr Richard House has been one of the most prolific and searching writers on the changes in the counselling and psychotherapy area of of UK psycho-practice these texts are essential reading.
  
  
• Personal Communication: An Internet mailing list exchange:
  Nick Totton, Robert M. Young and Digby Tantam This short exchange is interesting, to me at least, because of Digby Tantam's admission that UKCP is a trade association.