PLG C&P March 3rd meeting - day 2

What wasn't talked about yesterday: the threshold for entry onto the register. What wasn't talked about today: how to distinguish counsellors from psychotherapists.

What was talked about today was the number of voluntary registers that are known to exist (33 according to Sally Aldridge) and the traumatic effect this will have on the HPC. The Section 60 designates a legal date of transfer when a cd-rom is handed over, popped into a slot and dragged and dropped into a brand new folder. Usually there is one cd.

Here's a paragraph quoted from the web site of the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy against State Regulation which introduces the problem:

"The therapeutic field is a rich and complex ecology, built up of many different approaches. This diversity is intrinsically valuable – since clients and their issues are equally varied – and is part of what we want to protect; however, from a regulatory point of view it is awkward and inconvenient, and needs to be ironed out. Good training helps the practitioner to develop their own unique style of work, rather than making them conform to a supposed ‘best practice’. The proposed regulation bids fair to flatten this rich ecology into a monoculture, with devastating consequences for the profession and for its clients."

The fact is that this profession is based on conversation, includes aspects of conversation that can't be put into words, and is a conversation that really must be made in private. You can see why the centralised planner might be uncomfortable with that.

Today someone suggested that the HPC would have to take this profession in 33 different registers. The room laughed, and Michael Guthrie spluttered, then said the Department of Health couldn't cope with that.

It occurred to me then that in swallowing this profession, the HPC might risk choking to death.

More Regulation, Global Regulation

The news just now had poor old Gordon Brown wriggling on a hook about the economic collapse around the world. Gordon rightly said you need to diagnose the problem before you come up with the solution, then ignored his own advice by talking about robust regulation, strongest possible regulation, global regulation. He's right and also wrong. It all depends what you mean by regulation.

The idea of Popper's Nightmare is that this steady process of centralisation has been going on for years, the slow undermining of local practice and knowledge leads to a position where local knowledge and the structures that support it is destroyed. Technology plays a part in this, just as it plays a part in the re-animation. But, if you were the bloke in Central HQ facing an imminent election, and not terribly popular, you might not want to think about long term solutions to the crisis screaming in your face. BUT, a short term knee jerk increase in centralised power weilding (often what politicians mean by Robust Regulation, Strong Regulation, and Global Regulation) is going to make things worse. It keeps us locked into the nightmare.

Still, as this is likely to be the strategy, the rest of us need to think up some tactics. Humour, and humanity, theatre and maybe music, poetry perhaps. Antidotes to the boredom and lifelessness inflicted by the increasing administering of rules and their policing.

We should wish each other luck.