IA: Challenging Assumptions

1 How certain boundaries and ethics diminish therapeutic effectiveness Arnold A. Lazarus

2 Seeking professional help ‘Anna Sands’

3 Psychotherapy, society and the individual David Smail

4 Power and psychological techniques Nikolas Rose

5 Are professional codes ethical? Stephen Pattison

6 A surveillance culture? Colin Feltham

7 Citrinitas: therapy in a new paradigm world Petruska Clarkson

8 Psychological distress and postmodern thought Vivien Burr and Trevor Butt

9 Limits to counselling and therapy: deconstructing a professional ideology Richard House

 

IB: Challenging Professionalisation

10 Still whingeing: the professionalisation of therapy Yvonne Bates

11 The baby and the bathwater: ‘professionalisation’ in psychotherapy and counselling Nick Totton

12 Registering psychotherapy as an institutional neurosis: or, compounding the estrangement between soul and world Michael Whan

13 The statutory regulation of psychotherapy: still time to think again Richard House

14 Regulation: a treacherous path? Brian Thorne

15 Psychologists, licensing boards, ethics committees and dehumanising attitudes: with special reference to dual relationships Arnold A. Lazarus

 

IIA: Enabling Accountability and Co-operation

16 Professional regulation as facilitation, not control: implications for an open system of registration versus restrictive licensure Daniel B. Hogan

17 Psychopractice accountability: proposal for a national ‘full disclosure’ trade directory Denis Postle

18 The fallacy of accreditation: re-ensouling psychotherapy as an alternative to accreditation Gari Tomkins

19 Akhenaten’s folly: imposed beliefs in counselling and psychotherapy communities Yvonne Bates

20 Verbal and emotional abuse in therapy: encounters between therapy clients on therapy-abuse.net ‘Natalie Simpson’

 

IIB: Enabling Practice

21 Collaborative therapy: broadening the possibilities of clients and therapists Harlene Anderson

22 Unknowing: the Aquarian paradigm and therapy John Freestone

23 The power of language in therapeutic relationships Nicky Hart

24 Psy no more: towards a non-iatrogenic psychotherapy John Kaye

25 Soul in psychotherapy: an individual account Gael Rowan

26 Reflections and elaborations on ‘post-professionalised’ therapy practice Richard House

 

IIC: Whither Therapy?

27 The active client: therapy as self-help Arthur C. Bohart and Karen Tallman

28 The mirror and the hammer: some hesitant steps towards a more humane psychotherapy Ernesto Spinelli

29 The future of therapy Dharmavidya David Brazier

30 A client’s wish for the future of psychotherapy and counselling ‘Rosie Alexander’

 

 

I found this an immensely disquieting book and I believe it should be read by all who have an interest in and concern about counselling. Furthermore, like that irritating advertisement, I believe it achieves what it sets out to do on the cover … Being of help to others cannot by its very nature be a 'closed shop'; the idea conjures up a frightening 1984 world, one governed not by accountability but by fear. I cannot recommend this book too highly for the creative and accountable alternatives it offers.

Caro Bailey Therapy Today September 2005

 

Sacred cows are slaughtered and the emperor's nakedness is revealed again and again in these thirty essays by, not just therapists and academics but, unusually, some clients too. All have uncomfortable truths to utter. … Packed with ideas, insight, challenge and conviction, many of the pieces … would merit a full-length review in themselves. What holds for therapy holds for writing about it too: saying the unsayable releases a lot of stuck energy. Both books [also mentioned is Implausible Professions edited by Richard House and Nick Totton, PCCS Books] should be prescribed reading for all training courses, and indeed for all therapists.

Dr Peter Labanyi, Journal of IACP (Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy), Spring, 2005

 

Throughout this wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection, House and Bates hold the reins of the enquiry, gently but firmly keeping the collection on track and with a focused sense of purpose. The collection concludes with a brief section headed 'Whither Therapy', where contributions from Bohart and Tallman from the American perspective, David Brazier and Ernesto Spinelli round off an exceptionally intelligent, challenging and provoking array of views, which itself demonstrates the 'innovation and diversity' that the editors seek to promote. The final voice, appropriately, is that of an ex-client, and it is a feature of this as well as of House's previous writings, and of recent editions of this magazine, that clients finally get a voice in a collection intended, essentially, for therapists and trainees.

David Kalisch, Ipnosis Spring 2004

 

Although editors Yvonne Bates and Richard House have striven man- (and woman-)fully to corral thirty short essays about psychotherapy into sober-soundng categories like 'Challenging Professionalisation' … their 300-page book contains an exciting and wildly eclectic collection of personal reflections, philosophical and theoretical explorations, and suggestions for practical reform, all on the subject of professional psychotherapy and psychological counselling (particularly as practised in the UK today). … the book is a rich resource of thinking in critical therapy today.

Diane J. Klein, Metapsychology Online Book Reviews (http://mentalhelp.net/books)

 

This book is a real gem; in fact a collection of gems. … This collection of writings gives me real hope and increased strength on which to draw; I feel less alone, more connected and fortified by this veritable resource of a debate at the cutting edge of the development of this field of work.

Graeme Thomas, IPN Network communication (internet) November 2003