Psychotherapy self regulation – a licence to carry on abusing?

(This is a guest post by Howard Martin. He is a TV producer and was the original complainant in the Derek Gale case.)

The HPC case against Derek Gale has proven beyond reasonable doubt that they can run and manage a very difficult case, over a long period of time, which takes in complex issues of therapy technique and modality in a fair, transparent, reasonable and (above all) independent manner. They have proven that they can separate good practise and client protection from the confusions of what some claim to be good therapy. Some of the HPC panel’s decisions seem to be anomalous, for example, it being considered misconduct to ask a client for business advice but not to have clients completely renovate the therapist’s property including undertaking dangerous and highly specialised tasks such as asbestos removal. But I am sure that in due course these will be sorted out through case precedent.

Although I have never been a client of Gale nor any other psychotherapist in November 2005 (with specialist support) I instigated the HPC case against Gale as a third party complaint. We are very proud of what it has achieved. I would like to thank all those (you know who you are) who have been supportive of us and those who had the courage to make statements and be witnesses against Gale. You may think it bizarre but I would also like to thank Mr Gale himself. If he had not made the decisions he has and had conducted himself in a different manner over the past four years we would not have been presented with such a clear and present opportunity to expose the moribund, arrogant and self interested indulgence of the “independent” therapy community. Thanks to Mr Gale they now have nowhere to run and hide except up their own narcissist arses back out their sanctimonious mouths and into the sunlight of exposure as the hokumists and charlatans many of them appear to be.

The anti statutory regulation cabal like to present a sort of caring sharing image of how they would handle single authority regulation, which they seem to accept there is a need for. Although it’s sometimes difficult to work out exactly what their ideas are they seem to be based around the concept of an open list where anyone calling themselves a psychotherapist must register (though as always they get a bit fuzzy as to how they would enforce this without legislation) and list their qualifications, modality etc and most importantly (to them) have user comments attached to their websites rather like those honest holiday websites run by the holiday industry, so no chance of rigging there then. Then the troubled and vulnerable potential client can surf the list and make their choice of who to trust with their lives and money. Caveat Emptor indeed.

The cabal proposal seems to be that if complaints arise then a system of mediated arbitration and negotiation between the therapist and client will take place that will leave everybody happy and smiling. At least one of Gale’s therapist cronies tried this on with a complainant as a possible alternative to going forward with the HPC. Imagine how nice, loving and caring that would have been with Gale in the vicious vindictive cross examination mode he showed in the hearings, and his mates all sitting around with an ex client demanding to know why they were “lying” about their therapy experience and why they were so full of anger and hate that they didn’t understand how good being abused had been for them. No legal structure, no formal process, no protection for the client. Sounds like a perfect world for abusers, and it is, I know because it’s not that far removed from the system that already operates in the la la world of unregulated psychotherapy. .

Over the past four years, while working with the HPC to compile the Gale case, I have also been systematically bullied and intimidated by the UKCP (UK Council for Psychotherapy) and UKAHPP (UK Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners) who I also lodged complaints against Gale with in November 2005. These fine and dandy sounding associations and councils actually have no legal status above that of a local golf club. Do not for one moment then presume that you are dealing with a fine institution such as Gleneagles, you are in fact dealing with a patch of concrete in a rundown seaside resort where the golf is definitely crazy and the bloke who fixes your boiler is better regulated than these guys who claim to be able to fix your mind.

In his book “What is Psychotherapy” Gale claims to have been on the board of the AHPP and treasurer for the British Association of Drama therapists (BADth, who I must make clear are now properly regulated through the HPC) at some indefinite point in the past. After formally asking the AHPP to confirm this 19 times I finally got the answer that he may have been on the board prior to 1992. So, you get the picture that Gale was actually in with the cabal who set up the first psychotherapy associations to protect themselves from state regulation. He ingratiated himself into this little gang of self interest by being their vanity publishing gimp through his Gale Centre Books business that has published flimsy tomes on behalf of some rather (unfortunately) well regarded psychotherapy figures.

Gale has no recognised qualifications in psychotherapy or counselling of any kind and during the course of the HPC case it became very clear that he actually knows very little about the core principles, theories and practise of psychotherapy and he certainly knows nothing of contemporary principals and evidence based modalities. It’s certainly clear to me that he just picked up a few buzz words and very basic ideas from self help books and his cronies. Well those self regarding hippies, crystal botherers and exploiters are still around, many of them working in our leading universities as psychotherapy professors and lecturers. It is these people with their beliefs in indecent exposure to vulnerable clients disguised as naked interactions, “love” based therapeutic relationships and, in the case of Professor John Rowan who spoke in Gale’s defence, a therapy belief system so bizarre that I am convinced that his website proclaims that embracing mystical encounters with space aliens will solve marital problems, who are still highly respected in the self regulating associations.

It’s this gang who are influencing the present system and seem to believe they have a right to demand to run the next. In return they have all become reasonably wealthy individuals with the charismatic ability to flog any old horseshit as psychotherapy because they say it’s good for you. This is particularly true in the field of “Humanistic” therapy where anything seems to go so long as the client keeps paying. The whole sub culture of these associations, as born out by Gale, seems be one of building dependency to keep clients in therapy as long as possible.

At the hands of these people and their caring sharing “humanistic” complaints process I have encountered more disingenuous, vindictive and outright nasty behaviour than I have ever encountered in my 30 years in the back stabbing, bitch slapping, exploiting media circus that is TV production. Gale is at the fringes of this therapist as god culture although when the likes of Profs Windy Dryden, Brian Thorne and John Rowan showed up at his social occasions and appeared (to Gale clients) to be endorsing his multiple relationships and his descriptions of himself as “father” of his “therapy family” he probably thought he was at the centre of it. With Gale wallowing in this milieu of ethical bankruptcy it is easy to understand how criticisms of Gale as being evasive, untruthful, controlling and abusive become the same adjectives used to describe the complaints process.

Unlike the HPC where the complainant becomes a witness for the HPC and is put in the hands of very experienced professionals who support the investigation and the victims welfare needs the AHPP /UKCP process dictates that the complainant in effect carries out their own prosecution with the guidance of someone called a complaints facilitator, mine is Jochen Lude, an apparently well meaning guy who seems to be genuinely disgusted at the way I have been treated by the AHPP. To be quite honest though I think he would agree that he is out of his depth. With the “self regulation” system it is up to the complainant to find evidence, prepare it by attributing specific complaint events to breaches of specific code, present it to the committee, present any witnesses, question them, cross examine the “defendant” and his witnesses, in fact the complainant or his McKenzie style friend is supposed to do work as complex as that of the CPS and very experienced lawyers. Of course the complainant may seek counsel but unlike the HPC who engaged Michael Caplan QC the complainant must bear any costs themselves with no chance of reimbursement from either the AHPP or UKCP.

Take one step back and forget that it’s me in this process and imagine for one moment you are a vulnerable client who has been abused and is standing alone trying to make a complaint against your abuser. Is it any wonder that the AHPP has bragged to me that they get very few serious complaints and those they do have always reached satisfactory conclusions. Which I can only take to mean they have been effectively scared off at their initial meeting with the complaints facilitator, which is exactly what happened to three witnesses I put forward.

NEXT (if you want it) What happens when the self regulators get really nasty. The lies, the demands, the constant threats to drop the case and how the UKCP seemed to collude in creating a training modality for Gale that didn’t exist and won’t accept complaints against their member organisations unless you accept their bullying until they decide they’ve finished with you. In the public interest I am willing to tell all and name and shame………over to you.

HowardM

Copyright 2009 Howard Martin
All rights reserved – for publication only as part of the Mental Nurse website. No editing or copying by whatever means or for whatever purpose without express consent.