ENDORSEMENTS

 

Denis Postle confronts the status quo with its blind spots. He questions our compliance to ‘professionalism’ while reminding us that love and respect for the human condition cannot be legislated into us. I believe we need to consider what he says carefully if we are to avoid identifying ourselves with the alienating political and social conditions that bring our clients to us in the first place. This book is essential reading to all those who wish to make the practice of psychotherapy a fit home for the human spirit.

Professor Paul Barber, The Metanoia Institute.

 

This book is a relentless expose of the spurious claim that statutory regulation of psychotherapy is needed to protect the public. It chronicles the sustained machinations of a profession in pursuit of protection of its status by government edict, a pursuit that is driven by hidden and self-serving fear. Denis Postle reminds us that human helping calls for an open, unfettered and self-regulating professionalism which honours the wide-ranging liberation and flourishing of its clients.

John Heron, Retired Assistant Director, British Postgraduate Medical Federation, University of London

 

Every therapeutic practitioner in Britain should by now be thinking through the issue of State Regulation, and Denis Postle’s book is essential reading in this process. Combining a stunning overview of the field with passionate exploration into the arguments, it not only clarifies the subject but also provides a crucial counterbalance to conservative views. If you haven't yet read Regulating the Psychological Therapies, you haven't yet seen the whole picture on State Regulation.

Susan Quilliam, agony aunt, relationship psychologist, broadcaster and author.

 

 

PART I Waking up to the Shadow of Professionalisation

1. Stealing the Flame

2. Glacier Reaches Edge of Town

3. Resisting Psychotherapy Registration

4. How Does the Garden Grow?

5. Psychopractice for a Post-modern Era?

6. The Alchemists’ Nightmare: Gold into Lead—The Annexation of Psychotherapy in the UK

7. The Rush to Professionalise: Hidden Agendas

8. Complaints and Grievances in Psychotherapy by Fiona Palmer Barnes

9. Regulation … By Order

10. Statutory Regulation: Shrink-Wrapping Psychotherapy

11. Protecting the Client’s Experience: A User Guide to Psychotherapy

 

PART II Couch Wars: Defending the Walled Gardens of Professional Eden

12. Psychoanalysts Attempt a Regulatory Coup

13. Conversations about Power 14. Registering the Psychotherapy Bill

15. Registering Human Nature

16. Domineering, Sexist, Archaic: A Psychotherapy Bill?

17. Psychotherapy Bill ‘Bombshell’

18. Fear as a Psychotherapeutic Organising Principle?

19. Old Drawings in New Colours: The Statutory Regulation of Psychotherapy

20. UK Psychopractice: First Quarter 2005 Developments

21. An Established Church of False Promises

22. Psychopractice Accountability: A Practitioner ‘Full-Disclosure List’

 

23. Rowing Away From the Statutory Regulation of Psychotherapy

24. UKCP/BACP Mapping Research on Psychotherapy and Counselling: Initial Mapping Project for the Department of Health

25. Roles, Competencies and Complacency: Mapping the Territory of Psychotherapy and Counselling with the Department of Health

26. What Counts as Evidence? From Survival and Recovery to Flourishing: A Residential Cooperative Inquiry

27. Accountability for Client–Practitioner Relationships in UK Psychopractice: Ipnosis Submission to Department of Health Foster Review of Non-Medical regulation, 2005

28. Roles Analysis, Expropriation, Exclusion and Evidence

29. UKCP’s Love Affair with the State: The Second Decade—Science as Decoration

30. The UKCP Is Our Shepherd, We Shall Not Want …

31. The Regulation Journey: From Taxonomy to Taxidermy

32. The Penny’s Dropped 33. An Historic Moment

34. Guilt Hardens the Heart

35. CONCLUSION: Chickens to Wed Fox and Live in Henhouse?