Thanks to Writing in the Margins of My Mind for pointing out this Guardian article by the Lacanian psychoanalyst Darian Leader, albeit one in which Darian Leader really seems to need some cheese to go with his whine.
Darian Leader is annoyed because the government has decided to regulate psychotherapists – you know, the way doctors, nurses, OTs and so forth are regulated. Just so they don’t, like, kill you or something. The proposal is that psychotherapists come under the Health Professions Council which currently regulates occupational therapists, physiotherapists, paramedics, art therapists and other professions.
Fair enough, I’d say. If the HPC is already successfully regulating art therapy, then there’s no reason not to extend it to the rest of psychotherapy. Darian Leader, on the other hand, responds with the kind of defensive hostility one might expect of somebody who’s probably had to spend a fair few dinner parties being told that Lacanian psychoanalysis is a load of pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, vacuous drivel.
Continue reading Darian Leader calls for a waaaahmbulance
A while back I posted a retort to a Guardian article by Darian Leader opposing the state regulation of psychotherapists. Leader’s argument could be summed up as, “Waaaah! Waaaah! The government wants to regulate us! In the way that mere mortals like doctors, nurses and social workers get regulated! We might wind up actually answerable for our actions to somebody other than ourselves! Waaaah!”
So, I wasn’t all that sympathetic.
I’ve had an e-mail in response to that post from Mind, They enclose a press release:
Mind and WITNESS respond to ruling on Derek Gale case
The Health Care Professionals Council has today struck off Arts Therapist Derek Gale following wide ranging incidents of misconduct and abuse towards patients in his care. However, Gale has only been banned from practicing as an arts therapist, and under current legislation, can continue to practice as a psychotherapist or counsellor. Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of Mind, supported by Jonathan Coe, Chief Executive of WITNESS, said:
“Therapy can be an extremely sensitive process involving people at their most vulnerable, and requires patients to have absolute trust in their therapist while most therapists treat their patients with respect, sadly some cross the line between what is acceptable and appropriate and what is not.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy – why it matters
Last week I posted about the appalling case of Derek Gale, struck off as an arts therapist for rampant misconduct and abuse, but simply setting himself up as a “psychotherapist and counsellor” instead. He can do this because arts therapists are regulated by the Health Professions Council but psychotherapists are not. Anyone can call themselves a psychotherapist, regardless of their qualifications or background.
The government is working to close this loophole, but there’s a campaign mounted to keep psychotherapy unregulated by the HPC. Let’s have a look at who’s doing this and why.
The Coalition Against Over-Regulation of Psychotherapy is petitioning against the proposed legislation. Its list of signatories reads like a who’s who of the chattering classes.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy – Who’s Against it
As I’ve previously stated, I’m strongly in favour of the government proposal for psychotherapists to be regulated by the Health Professions Council. The Derek Gale case (struck off by the HPC as an arts therapist for abuse and misconduct, but able to continue working by simply changing his job title to psychotherapist) shows that this is deeply necessary in order to protect vulnerable people.
Still, I think we need to hear more from those psychotherapists who are campaigning against regulation of their profession. One such opponent is the elpnosis website, which declares the proposed regulation to be a “notably unintelligent and values incongruent move”. Christ, and people say NHS managers need to learn to speak plain English.
The website is…well, it’s pure comedy gold, quite frankly. Not least with its blow-by-blow account of the HPC hearings against Derek Gale.
Scene: the Health Professions Council chamber. A large completely white room. A rectangle of white tables fills most of the space. On them are half a dozen microphones plugged into a court-room style voice recorder. Nearby is a court stenographer’s keyboard. Along one wall are the dozen or so chairs of the public gallery. Narrow white venetian blinds over huge windows hide the backstreet outside. Half of the wall opposite them has a floor to ceiling window onto the corridor. High up in one corner in a tiny brown dome, is a cctv camera. Modern. Featureless. Anonymous. The sun begins to illuminate the back wall but it’s a false promise, a reflection from windows of nearby office block.
Erm quite…
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy – More from its opponents
(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.
Continue reading Psychotherapy self regulation – a licence to carry on abusing?
Today the Health Professions Council opened its register to psychologists. Some members of the psychotherapy profession may be horrified by the same thing happening to psychotherapists and counsellors, but the mental health charities Mind and WITNESS are dead in favour. Their press release is as follows:
Patients will continue to be unprotected if statutory independent regulation is not extended to counsellors and psychotherapists, according to leading national charities Mind and WITNESS. On the day that psychologists are to be regulated by the Health Professions Council (HPC), the charities welcome the advancement and urge counsellors and psychotherapists to follow suit.
Psychological therapies remain one of the least regulated areas of mental health practice in the UK, currently anyone can set themselves up as a counsellor or psychotherapist, without formal training or need to join a professional organisation. There is no single body to monitor malpractice and numerous complex complaints systems make it difficult for patients to take up claims. The Government has promised HPC regulation for psychotherapists and counsellors by 2011 but there remains some professional opposition to the plans.
Continue reading Psychologists join the HPC register
(This is a guest post by Howard Martin, the original complainant in the Derek Gale case. His previous guest post, describing the experience of bringing Derek Gale before the Health Professions Council, can be found here.)
Having a female client simulate masturbation with a cushion while also doing so yourself. Pressuring clients to strip naked in front of the therapy “family”. Having clients provide pornographic videos and then pressuring the “family” to watch them en masse. Photographing female clients topless while on holiday with them and also having them pose half naked for so called art therapy. Punching a female client in the stomach during a singing lesson. Repeated, consistent and demeaning verbal abuse. Running a charity to screw more money out of your clients’ employers. Grabbing a male client by the crotch and attempting to kiss him. Attending client parties in nothing but your underpants and a jacket. Impersonating a mentally ill person while out shopping with your clients. Stealing milk from the local supermarket to impress your clients. Making malicious complaints to the police about complainants. Having bank accounts in another person’s name. Recommending a divorce lawyer to clients who turns out to be nothing more than a friend who is a legal secretary. Claiming to be a world renowned psychotherapist at the cutting edge of the profession and describing yourself as “something of a guru in the world of psychotherapy” when you have no qualifications whatsoever.
Welcome to the world of Gale that the HPC hearings barely touched on. For various reasons some allegations were dropped from the original HPC list. Others never appeared due to them requiring the criminal rather than civil burden of proof as they would constitute criminal acts. It is important to have the flavour of these allegations so that there is no doubt as to the sort of behaviour that the self regulation cabal are condoning and protecting with their claims that they are the ones best placed to deal with the likes of Gale.
Continue reading The sham of self-regulation
[We've previously covered the proposed regulation of psychotherapy by the Health Professions Council, as well as cases of abuse by psychotherapists such as Derek Gale. In my view, such cases highlight a need for psychotherapy to be regulated in order to protect the public. In this opposing view, psychotherapist Arthur Musgrave explains why he believes the Health Professions Council does not provide the answer. A second response by his colleague Richard House will be published tomorrow. Z]
My name is Arthur Musgrave and I work in private practice in Bristol. I am accredited by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy as a counsellor/psychotherapist and as a supervisor of individuals and groups. For eight years I have belonged to a Full Member Group of the Independent Practitioners’ Network. I regard these two means of making myself accountable as complementary.
During the 1990s I served for a number of years on the Management Committee of what was then the British Association for Counselling as well as on its Standards and Ethics Committee, but I resigned from both over the organisation’s approach to professionalisation, which seemed to me to be putting the interests of practitioners before those of the public at large.
I’m going to argue here against a register of counsellors and psychotherapists that involves the protection of titles, and – in particular – against Health Professions Council [HPC] regulation, which I think is an especially bad idea. If regulation is to be introduced at all, it should be done in the most effective way possible and two general principles are crucial – The advantages of any specific form of regulation must outweigh any unintended negative consequences. The merits and demerits of any particular course of action should be dealt with by argument and by looking at all the relevant evidence and experience.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy – A Psychotherapist Responds (1)
[This blog previously hosted a two-part article by Howard Martin, the original complainant in the Derek Gale case. Martin heavily criticised the current professional bodies for psychotherapy, and argued that this demonstrates the need for psychotherapists to be statutorily regulated to prevent abuse. Richard House, a practising psychotherapist, responds here to Martin. Z]
This is a full critical response to Howard Martin’s recent ‘Mental Nurse’ post from someone in the Independent Practitioners Network and the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy who is implacably against the HPC regulation of the psy therapies.
It would be very easy to respond with equally vituperative vitriol to Howard’s quasi-rant of a posting, in which he disparages what he discriminatingly calls the “moribund, arrogant and self interested indulgence of the ‘independent’ therapy community”,. However, the rationality of the case against the HPC state regulation of the psy therapies is so overwhelming that I have no need to resort to rhetoric or abuse in making the argument; so I will patiently rehearse some of the rational arguments here. In the process, I will systematically dismantle the threadbare case that Howard makes in favour of HPC regulation.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy – A Psychotherapist Responds (2)
(Guest post by Arthur Musgrave)
My apologies for the delay in posting this, the second part of my response to your comment – Arthur
Your point about a solution to the current debate as to who should have prior claim to the titles ‘counsellor’ and ‘psychotherapist’ demands careful consideration.
I agree with you that the business of psychotherapy/counselling is done with people who are suffering and in psychological distress. I also agree with you that personal coaching is generally seen as a self‑improvement thing. In other words these two activities are distinct. But the HPC doesn’t regulate activities – it regulates titles. So, as far as the principles underpinning this form of regulation are concerned, provided people don’t either use a protected title or imply they’re entitled to use it, they can do what they want. So there’s still the problem that HPC regulation will allow someone like Derek Gale to practice, even though he has been struck off the HPC register.
But you seem to be arguing that, despite the huge cost of the Derek Gale case and the resulting unsatisfactory sanction, nonetheless HPC regulation is still worth pursuing because, once the terms ‘counsellor’ and ‘psychotherapist’ can only be used by those registered by the HPC, the public will be well enough protected – and they will be well enough protected because, although some people may still make use of someone like Derek Gale, if people clear they’re after a counsellor or psychotherapist, they would be less likely than now to end up seeing the wrong person.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy – Response to Zarathustra
I’ve previously highlighted the unregulated nature of counselling and psychotherapy in the UK. Arts therapists and clinical psychologists are now regulated by the Health Professions Council, so that any rogue practitioners can be struck off. The same does not apply to psychotherapists or counsellors. The risk this presents was demonstrated by the Derek Gale case. Struck off as an arts therapist by the HPC for abusing his clients, he simply retitled himself as a psychotherapist and carried on practicing.
Because of cases like Derek Gale, I fully support the ongoing moves for counsellors and psychotherapists to be regulated by the HPC alongside their arts therapist and psychologist colleagues.
Yesterday, a second arts therapist, Andrew Davies, was struck off by the HPC. The reasons are straightforward. He was shagging his clients.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy – Another Arts Therapist struck off
A topic that I’ve regularly featured is the government proposal for psychotherapy to become regulated by the Health Professions Council. I’m in favour of it because of shocking cases like that of Derek Gale, who was struck off by the HPC as an arts therapist for abusing his patients, and then promptly set up shop as a psychotherapist and counsellor instead.
This happened because arts therapist is a protected title, same as doctors, nurses and occupational therapists. You can go to jail for using a protected title if you’re not registered with the appropriate body. Meanwhile, any quack, charlatan or yahoo can call themselves a psychotherapist or a counsellor, regardless of qualifications, background or criminal convictions. This isn’t safe for the public; hence psychotherapists and counsellors need to come under a statutory register such as that of the HPC.
There’s a vociferous, and at times slightly unhinged campaign going on from a coalition of psychotherapists opposing the regulation proposals. They’ve now published the Maresfield Report (PDF File) outlining their objections. It’s been described as a “devastating critique” and “a major embarrassment to HPC” by no less an authority than themselves.
So, what’s their objection? Well, among other things, they’re concerned that the Health Professions Council will make psychotherapists wear spacesuits.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy: The Maresfield Report (1)
Yesterday I posted about the Maresfield Report, which offers a “devastating critique” (well, according to their press release) of the case for regulation of the psychotherapy profession by the Health Professions Council. Among other things they offer the stunning revelation that psychotherapists shouldn’t be regulated because, er, they aren’t required to abide by child protection or Protection of Vulnerable Adults legislation.
This really is quite an unbelievable claim on their part. If I stated in work that confidentiality could override child protection/POVA concerns, then I’d be hauled into supervision to have some very fundamental questions asked about whether I’m safe to practice. If I said it in a job interview, it would absolutely guarantee that I wouldn’t be offered the job. But here it is stated in a report that’s endorsed by no less than ten psychotherapy organisations – including the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, the Arbours Association, the Philadelphia Association and the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis.
The authors claim that this report is a “a major embarrassment to HPC”. It’s a major embarrassment to somebody, all right, but I’m not sure it’s the HPC.
I’ve been reading more of the report, and in between smacking my own head on a desk, I’ve discovered more examples of outright stupidity. So, ding-ding, Round Two of my critique of the Bible of Boswellox that is the Maresfield Report.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy: Maresfield Report (2)
Meet Andrew Samuels, Jungian psychotherapist and Professor of Analytical Psychology at the University of Essex. He’s a leading spokesperson for the campaign against HPC regulation of psychotherapy. A month ago he was elected chair of the UK Council for Psychotherapy, the main umbrella body for psychotherapy organisations in Britain.
So, how will the UKCP’s new chair engage with the Health Professions Council on the tricky issue of regulating psychotherapy? The answer, it would seem, is by posting ranty, paranoid video messages attacking the chief executive of the HPC.
In the video Samuels accuses the HPC of planning to prosecute him after “psychotherapist” becomes a protected title, though this appears to be on the basis of little more than having received a couple of letters from them asking what job title he intends to use after regulation kicks in. He announces that he will use the term “Jungian analyst” or some similar wording that won’t come under the list of protected titles. Regarding any possibility of prosecution by the HPC, he glowers, “Don’t try it!” Which really begs the schoolyard taunt of, “Or you’ll do what?”
But what does Andrew Samuels think of the Derek Gale case, which I’ve flagged up as an example of why psychotherapy needs to be regulated? (Quick primer: Derek Gale was struck off as an arts therapist by the HPC for running a manipulative, cult-like psychotherapy practice with shedloads of emotional, sexual and financial exploitation. But because “arts therapist” is a protected title and “psychotherapist” is not, he simply retitled himself as a psychotherapist and carried on practicing.)
It turns out that the good professor took a strong interest in Gale’s spot of trouble with the HPC. In fact, as the transcripts of the HPC hearings show, Samuels tried to help Gale out.
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy: Something rotten in the state of Denmark?
Last week I highlighted the role of Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology at Essex University, in the Derek Gale abuse case.
Samuels is currently claiming (see comments thread) that it’s an “urban myth” that he offered to be his Gale’s supervisor if Gale’s suspension from the Health Professions Council was lifted. If it’s an urban myth, it’s one that has spread to the transcripts of the HPC hearing. (PDF file: see pages 36, 37 and 47)
It turns out Professor Samuels wasn’t the only prominent psychotherapist to leap to Gale’s support when he was up before the HPC for running a deeply abusive therapy cult. Time now to meet Brian Thorne, Emeritus Professor of Counselling at the University of East Anglia.
Oh, by the way, the rest of this post is going to get raunchy. Not only did Thorne speak in Gale’s defence, but he’s also the author of a knee-tremblingly sexy guide on how to get your rocks off by sexually exploiting vulnerable adults. So, adjust your underwear, put on the romantic music and prepare for some heart-racing breach-of-boundaries action.
(Sarcasm aside, I should point out that the following includes material that may be triggering to sexual abuse survivors. Readers with trauma issues may wish to exercise due caution before deciding whether they want to read this.)
Continue reading Regulation of Psychotherapy: Something Rotten in the State of Denmark (2)
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