I am writing in response to Lynne Gabriel’s letter to BACP members about the HPC consultation and their proposed definitions of psychotherapist and counsellor.

I agree that their definitions are arbitrarily defined and that many counsellors would satisfy their criteria for pscyhotherapy and many psychotherapists would not. Predictably the HPC criteria are locked into a medical and pathological view of what they see as patients (either they are ‘mentally ill’ or simply have ‘wellbeing’ problems). This makes the context of the consultation a difficult one for us to penetrate - we do not share a common language or understanding of our work with HPC. It is more like a definition of a psychiatrist.

However, I think this is a complex issue and in trying to simplify it neither HPC’s stance (in which the difference is tightly controlled and quantifiable, but based on ignorance of how we work) nor BACP’s (in which there is no difference between psychotherapist and counsellor) is actually helpful. They may be, as BACP says, of equal value but they are not the same. Because BACP appears to have extended its membership and requirements for counsellors to include people with shorter and less rigorous training or academic courses without any experience of personal therapy, we now have more than one category (BACP) or two categories (HPC). Perhaps what is needed is a several tier system: the first for counsellors with the briefest training (or just trained in brief therapy or short term CBT) and no experience of personal therapy, the second for psychotherapeutic counsellors who have at least three years training to diploma level and have had therapy themselves, and the final category for those who have done the full psychotherapy training.

There is a continuum and it helps nobody to deny it. Over simplification does as great a disservice as over regulation. I hope the consultation is a genuine one, not a rubber stamping operation, so that BACP can influence any decisions. I agree there are fundamental flaws with implications for us all.

Annie Tunnicliffe