Therapy as State Sponsored Brainwashing?

Unpublished letter to The Telegraph by Professor Andrew Samuels, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex.

‘As Chair of the UK Council for Psychotherapy 2009-12, I very much hope that all the psychotherapy and counselling registering bodies, particularly those held under the accredited voluntary register scheme of the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), will pay heed to what Sarah Wollaston has said (Stripping benefits claimants if they refuse depression treatment is ‘unethical’, The Telegraph, 13 July 2014).

For any registered member to participate in this Government scheme would constitute serious professional misconduct and lead to serious sanctions. The PSA and the registering bodies that it accredits should immediately issue a joint statement to this effect. From Freud’s idea of ‘free association’ to Jung’s concept of ‘individuation’ to Carl Rogers’s idea of ‘person-centred’ therapy, counselling and psychotherapy are practices that rest entirely on the autonomy of both parties being recognised. That is why, in the contemporary lexicon, therapy is referred to as a ‘co-created’ activity. It can never be allowed to become state sponsored brain-washing.’

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