Underlying and driving this position is the fear of being found to be discreditable, of being cast out of the profession. 'It is better not to seek accreditation, than seeking it, to fail.' Resistance to accreditation by any procedure may arise from the sense of professional maturity and integrity which sees the whole procedure as a redundant irrelevancy. It may also stem from anxiety about being discovered to be incompetent. 'If people really knew the mistakes I make, the mess I get into, the difficulties I have engaging with clients, they could not possibly accredit me.' Some of the most robust rebellion against accreditation may well be a displacement of some such fear lurking in the shadows. So much of the emotion associated with examination inherent in the very notion of accreditation reaches back to those most primitive levels of being acceptable or not acceptable in the first experienced environment. Those who know themselves to have been profoundly and deeply acceptable and affirmed will therefore be quite confident in approaching any procedure of accreditation. The therapist whose imprinted experience is of pro- found rejection maybe stimulated into primal terror at the very thought of exposing him/herself to an assessing environment. The infant alising transactions and the processes of projection and transference stimulated within the accreditation procedures run profoundly counter to the mature inter-dependence of adult/adult engagement which the profession seeks to engender as a norm of social relationships. It is this kind of distortion in the professional dynamics, in which the procedures adopted are completely out of gear with the underlying value system, that provides a pointer and a clue to the origin of the shadow of accreditation

The European Connection
There are different patterns of legal control operating under the different legislative systems within the European Community. In England and Wales the individual is free to advertise services and to receive payment for them unless legislation is enacted specifically forbidding the particular activity. Just as a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, so the assumption about any remunerative activity is that it is legal unless declared unlawful. The situation is quite different in the majority of Common Market countries. Here legislation concerning remunerative activity is proactive. The question about the legality of any particular mode of employment is therefore, 'Has this been legally endorsed as a remunerable activity within the public sphere?' If not it is illegal. Procedures of accreditation, control and legalisation are quite distinct within the two legislative situations. Within the realm of English Common Law anyone may offer their services in a therapeutic capacity unless already forbidden so to do by existing law. Within other Common Market countries no-one may exercise a profession as a therapist unless legally entitled so to do.

Against this background the whole debate about accreditation can be seen as one facet of the struggle at the boundary between English customs, constitution and Common Law and the practices, customs and legal statutes of other European partners. Attempts to negotiate around the whole area of accreditation within psychotherapy which do not take this meta-level, or contextual, dynamic into account may in fact not be dealing with the right level of engagement. Equal outrage is experienced by the makers of potato crisps, whose flavours have been rendered illegal within the Community's pedantic forest of laws.

Accreditation and the Dynamics of Social Systems
Some of the most powerful dynamic forces within the shadow of accreditation stem from the corporate processes of the profession as a whole. The greatest strengths of counsellors, analysts and therapists lie in the area of one-to-one engagements, working with great sensitivity and awareness in creative relationships with individual clients. Groups are sometimes used, but usually for 'therapeutic' or personal development purposes in which the group setting is a context in which the individuals are supported to work on their own process. The focus is not on the dynamic of the group as a whole. Very few therapists have developed the skills of group analysis, together with intervention strategies based on a deep awareness and understanding of inter-group, organisational, institutional and social dynamic processes. This blind spot renders the profession peculiarly vulnerable to dynamic collusion in its social behaviour. If you bring a group of therapists together there is extremely sharp awareness of the individual processes going on, but comparative unconsciousness of the group dynamics in play. The weakness shows itself with great intensity in the difficulties experienced in the politics of therapeutic organisations and in conferences, large workshops, annual gatherings and congresses, held by different sectors of the profession. It is particularly noticed in those events which span, and therefore incorporate the dynamics from, a wide cross section of the different groups and institutions within the profession as a whole. It is therefore likely that the UK Standing Conference and the issue of accreditation, which have gathered the broadest spectrum of professional interests mto a single focal point, might constitute an arena for the acting out of the corporate unconscious of the profession.

It is, of course, the areas of the common unconscious which dominate these group and institutional processes, whereas the whole training and intent of individual therapists sharpens their awareness of the individual and deviant patterns of the client. There seem to be three strands of this common unconscious dynamic which weave and inter-relate in the psychodrama of accreditation. They are generated firstly by dynamics originating from within the profession, secondly by those emanating from the client-base, and thirdly by the processes of the wider society as a whole. In practice the three areas are overlaid on each other with complex patterns of introjection,