I read John McLeod’s vision on the future of counselling (Therapy Today, July 09) with increasing dismay. For too long I have watched BACP and UKCP pursuing their own agendas, while unnecessarily continuing the confusion between counselling and psychotherapy, for users and practitioners alike. The difference between them has remained one of the interminable questions. Why?
 
Counselling is a distinctive professional activity with a rich contribution to make and I think McLeod brings that out very well. However the two activities are inextricably linked and identifying the future of counselling without doing the same for psychotherapy, apart from the odd sentence, feels incomplete. This at a time when the regulatory proposals are suggesting (or forcing through) a clearer continuum.
 
From December UKCP is changing the way practitioners register with them to a more direct approach that is similar to BACP, which I am delighted about. Government pressure is forcing some synchronicity and this is one of the few things that turns out to be ‘in the public interest’. Counselling and psychotherapy training have much in common but the way the professions are organised tends to just highlight the differences.
 
What McLeod describes for the future of counselling is what I understand as leaning towards good (organisational) coaching, working within the cultural context of the relevant organisation. (In European Gestalt therapy, organisational coaching is of the same standard as psychotherapy so it is seen as a very substantial way of working.) It is also the focus of much time-limited work.
 
I’m not sure that I buy into McLeod’s fear that counseling will disappear if it is not differentiated from psychotherapy. Some psychologists continue to be clinical psychologists, doctors to be psychiatrists, solicitors to become barristers but it doesn’t dilute those who remain at the first qualification – providing they don’t feel apologetic for doing so. Indeed many psychotherapists have to get work as a counsellor because of the higher demand. I appreciate the challenge from the evidenced-based culture, but therapies are being used more than ever before – and even the evidence-based challenge and debate is heightening the profile and visibility of all psychological therapies.
 
We have 50 self-employed counsellors and psychotherapists busily working side by side providing a seamless service with different modalities at Birmingham Counselling & Psychotherapy Centre. Some psychotherapists struggle (or are resistant to) the sharper focus of time-limited work but all practitioners will work at different depths within a deepening relationship. Their ability to do this will be determined by more things than the title of their initial training course.
 
I applaud McLeod’s attempt to look at the future of the professions but I fall into the 90 per cent he anticipated would disagree with him!
 

Bob Smith