I have received the most extraordinary letter from our Chair, Lynne Gabriel, asking for my support in BACP’s dealings with the Health Professions Council.
 
Now, I really do want to avoid crowing over what appears to have happened. Personally, I think it was a bad decision to have anything to do with HPC. The consequence, as many others have suggested, has been to legitimise the consultation process – a process which, as so often with official bodies, has been consultation in name only, not in substance.
 
Nonetheless, I can see why the decision to get involved with the process was taken. It is easy to be wise after the event. But what I find extraordinary about Ms Gabriel’s letter is that even now she really doesn’t seem to get it. For most person-centred counsellors the terms ‘severe mental disorder’ and ‘diagnosis’ with all the half-baked psychiatric jargon that they imply are complete non-starters. What astounds me is not the question as to whether the terms counsellor and psychotherapist should be treated as one and the same; it is the fact that she seems to have no idea what many of us actually do.
 
Writing to HPC with the plea that we are all treated the same I cannot see as either desirable or likely to produce any useful result. By communicating with HPC in this manner, we simply add more legitimacy to their claim to have ‘consulted’ with us.
 
BACP must, I believe, now withdraw from any dealings with HPC, and disown anything to do with this fake consultation. By the same token I think that if, as individuals, we are to communicate with HPC, then it can only be to reject any claim to legitimacy on their part in their dealings with ourselves or with BACP. At least the idea of principled non-compliance feels a lot more comfortable than it did – or certainly a lot less uncomfortable than submitting myself to an organisation as rigid, ignorant and obtuse as HPC.
 
It is time also for BACP to listen to its members. At the very least it is time – albeit late in the day – to canvass members fully on what they think about regulation.
 

William Johnston