PCCS Books > Implausible Professions: <em>Arguments for pluralism and autonomy in psychotherapy and counselling</em>

• Can psychotherapy and counselling be reduced to a set objective, expert skills?

• What model of accountability is truly congruent with the values of therapeutic work?

• Can effective practitionership be trained-in?

• Can therapy ever be made 'safe'?

• Are there viable, practical alternatives to current models of professionalisation?

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Contents

• The politics of transference, John Heron

• In the shadow of accreditation, David Wasdell

• Too vulnerable to choose?, Richard Mowbray

• Reflections on fear and love in accreditation, Robin Shohet

• The dynamics of counselling research: a critical view, Richard House

• 'Audit-mindedness' in counselling, Richard House

• A case to answer, Richard Mowbray

• The myth of therapist expertise, Katharine Mair

• Training: a guarantee of competence? Richard House

• Inputs and outcomes: the medical model and professionalisation, Nick Totton

• Challenging the core theoretical model, Colin Feltham

• Not just a job: psychotherapy as a spiritual and political practice, Nick Totton

• The accountable psychotherapist: standards, experts and poisoning the well, Brian Thorne

• Counselling in the UK: jungle, garden or monoculture? Denis Postle

• Psychotherapy and tragedy, David Smail

• The making of a therapist and the corruption of the training market, Guy Gladstone

• Uncovering the mirror: our evolving personal relationship with accreditation, Sue Hatfield & Cal Cannon

• Pluralism and psychotherapy: what is a good training? Andrew Samuels

• The teaching of psychotherapy, Peter Lomas

• Therapy in New Paradigm perspective: the phenomenon of Georg Groddeck, Richard House

• A self-generating practitioner community, John Heron

• Practitioner development through self-direction: The South West London College counselling courses, Val Blomfield

• Developing self-determination: self and peer assessment and accreditation at the Institute for the Development of Human Potential, Michael Eales

• The University of East Anglia Person-Centred Counselling training, Michael McMillan and Catherine Hayes

• Assessment tension on a university-based counselling training course course, Jill Davies

• The Independent Practitioners Network: a new model of accountability, Nick Totton

• Self and peer assessment: a personal story, Juliet Lamont & Annie Spencer

• Stepping off the 'Game-Board': a new practitioner's view of accreditation, Marion Hall

• Learning by mistake: client-practitioner conflict in a self-regulated network, Nick Totton

• Participatory ethics in a self-generating practitioner community, Richard House

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Reviews — Universally acclaimed as one of the most important counselling/psychotherapy books of the 90s, this book has an impressive clutch of reviewers exclaiming:

I found this book most stimulating, and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with any connection with therapy as essential reading. Dr Michael Hopwood, Network, No.71, December. 1999.

I feel that it should be required reading . . . I did not find a single essay in the collection dull or predictable, and though I think the whole is greater than the parts, still the parts are all interesting in themselves. Mary Montaut, Inside Out, No. 32, Spring 1998.

I believe that anyone involved in any psychotherapy or counselling regulating body, in training, accreditation, supervision, research or practice would benefit from reading this book. Whizz Collis. International Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol.3, No.2, 1998

[This book] is about psychotherapists but deserves to be read by social workers as well … [The papers] all testify to a malaise with the way in which some groups are trying to monopolise British psychotherapy and counselling through professional associations and accreditation schemes … For a UK readership this must be a provoking and thought-provoking book but it could – and should – also spark off reflections abroad … this book has something to tell colleages everywhere. Jacob Kornbeck EuroSocialworker August 2001

Whichever view you start from in these matters, these arguments demand to be heard and understood. Barrie Hinksman. Counselling, Vol. 9, No. 3. August 1998

A careful reading of this book would serve to open up questions about registration and help therapists and clients register their dissent and find some better ways forward. Ian Parker The European Journal of Psychotherapy, Counselling and Health, Dec 1998

The ability of those psychotherapists who believe in professionalisation, to censor their opponents, probably without even thinking of themselves as being sensors, is an extremely worrying symptom. I would recommend all counsellors and psychotherapists to consider the arguments put forward in this book. Martin Guha, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol. 45, No. 3, 1999.

The many quotes and references mean that probably a hundred or more voices are all singing the same song: a powerful chorus. This book makes it easy for us to develop our own response by delivering hundreds of hours of the preliminary hard work . . . Buy it now. Christopher J. Coulson, Self & Society, March 1998.