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Nr 11. 2004 sid.
92–112
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Child Psychotherapy in Britain is at a crossroads. Some would say the profession is undergoing a crisis of identity. However as psychotherapists we should be wary of thinking of ‘crisis’ in a purely negative way. Just as we encourage our clients to think of a crisis as a situation of challenge for an individual or group, and as affording the opportunity for reappraisal and further develop-ment, so we have to confront the internal and external challenges to our organisation and work with a similar outlook. What, you may be wondering, is this critical situation confronting Child Psychotherapists in Britain? It can be summed up under two headings: identity and impact. Identity, because it concerns the way Child Psychotherapists see themselves, and the way that fellow professionals view them; and impact, because it has to do with what Child Psychotherapists ‘deliver’ within the ambit of Child Health – to use the now fashionable term – and how others see and value (or do not value) their contribution. There is something singularly ironic about the timing of the current crisis. It seems to have arisen just at the moment when Child Psychotherapists in Britain have finally managed to get Government to recognise the need for proper funding for their training, both by establishing a sufficiency of training posts, and by providing financially for the setting up of regional training es-tablishments, things that the Association of Child Psychotherapists has long been lobbying for. It is almost as if, having become fully established for the first time on an equal basis with other professions within the framework of Child Mental Health provision, Child Psychotherapy was now being forced to establish its credentials, its raison d’être more rigorously and in the face of greater challenge than ever before. On the one hand, there are the requirements of clinical audit, with its emphasis on a rather rigid version of evidence-based practice; on the other the clamour of some new non-analytic and para-analytic forms of therapy for recognition as equivalent pathways to accreditation. To understand the significance of this challenge, it is important to realise that the professional title of Child Psychotherapist in Britain has historically belonged to members of the Association of Child Psychotherapists alone, that is to say those who have qualified through one of its officially recognised training schools. At first members of the Association were called Child Psychotherapists because they alone wanted to lay claim to the title. Fifty years ago in Britain, psychologists and psychiatrists, even counsellors and social workers, did not aspire to become known as psychotherapists. Therapy, it used to be said by these fellow professionals, is something we all ‘do’ by virtue of what we are – it’s not something one specially trains for. The implication seemed to be that if people wanted to become recognised as Child Psychotherapists it must be because they felt the lack of other specialist skills. However, what at first had seemed a handicap turned out in time to be a boon for Child Psychotherapists. Largely due to the persevering efforts of some of the Association’s early officers in explaining to Government the need and specificity of Child Psychotherapy, separate recognition for the discipline was eventually won. What is more, it became officially accepted that only those so qualified would be allowed to take up funded posts as Child Psychotherapists within the National Health Service (Wills, 1978; Lush et al. 1999). ...
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Copyright: Allt material ©
MELLANRUMMET 2011-10-29 |
En tidigare version av
detta paper presenterades på en workshop vid EFPP:s (the European
Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Public Sector)
konferens i Stockholm 2003. Det har också publicerats i Insikten nr. 4,
september 2003. Insikten har givit sitt godkännande för publikation i
Mellanrummet. Här presenteras en något reviderad version av det
ursprungliga papret. Christopher Reeves, St Agnes, Cornwall, är utbildad
barnpsykoterapeut vid the Tavistock Clinic, London. Han arbetade som
barnpsykoterapeut vid Child Guidance Clinic till 1980 då han blev
Principal of the Mulberry Bush School, Standlake, Oxfordshire. Under
många år har han föreläst och lett seminarier i Danmark. Han är numera
pensionerad men fortsätter att skriva om psykoanalytiska spörsmål,
framför allt utifrån Donald Winnicotts arbete.
