Sir, I believe the anger that many therapists feel about the proposed regulation of their profession has been largely triggered by a misconception. As Andrew Billen’s article in times2 (July 15) states, a body called Skills for Health has produced a draft set of guidelines for therapy, while the actual regulator comments that it has no interest in using regulation to “exclude or marginalise practitioners” or to “favour one therapy style at the expense of another”.

Whatever form it finally takes, regulation of the talking therapies must meet the Government’s five key principles and be “transparent, accountable, proportionate, consistent and targeted”. It is our understanding that the regulator is about to send out a call for ideas on counselling and psychotherapy in advance of establishing a professional liaison group (PLG). This PLG will debate and help to define the issues about the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy. The national occupational standards for the psychological therapies will form part of the data that informs the work of this group.

I have confidence that the regulator will achieve a satisfactory resolution but our ultimate goal is the greater protection of the public. This cannot be achieved if either the therapists are prevented from doing their jobs or the work of the regulator is misrepresented.

Laurie Clarke
Chief Executive, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

Sir, We psychotherapists probably do have ourselves to blame for not presenting ourselves well. Caught between unnecessary mystification and bogus science, ravaged by ideological splits and the narcissism of small differences, a profession seemingly open to anyone to practise — it can seem to those who don’t follow these things closely that it has become only too necessary for the Government to act. But the total shambles of the exercises being carried out by Skills for Health and the Health Professions Council mean that it is timely to call a halt.

There has been no polling done of practising psychotherapists, many of whom are signing the numerous petitions calling for an urgent rethink. This is not professional protectionism or an unwillingness to face up to the need to discipline transgressors. It is a belated recognition that we are on the brink of destroying a voluntary, pluralistic system of self-regulation that, whatever the faults that many of us can see in it, remains the better way to proceed.

Andrew Samuels
Professor of Analytical Psychology
Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex

Sir, All the mainstream professional bodies, including the British Psychoanalytic Council, between them representing tens of thousands of professionals, actively support statutory regulation. This issue is then conflated with Skills for Health’s work in developing a competency framework for psychological therapies. This exercise will help training providers to think more explicitly about the skills and knowledge they are developing in their trainees. It has nothing to do with setting out “rules” that prescribe the “right way” to conduct psychotherapy.

Taxpayers have a right to expect that publicly funded therapy available on the NHS has outcomes — however problematic they are to measure sometimes in the complex field of mental health. We do indeed assert that good psychotherapeutic interventions should be informed by science and that their claim to efficacy will rightly stand or fall in the face of hard evidence. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is taking its place as an effective, evidence-based intervention within contemporary mental health provision. We are not helped by those who try to make psychoanalysis into a mystery cult.

Malcolm Allen
Chief Executive Officer, British Psychoanalytic Council

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