Synopsis
The first edition of Implausible Professions, published in 1997, foretold many of the core issues around therapy 'professionalisation' that have come to dominate the field in recent years as the shadow of possible state regulation has loomed ever larger over the psy landscape. In the current highly charged context, this new edition could not be better timed. The many and diverse chapters, written by a mix of well-known names and new arrivals, are as fresh and relevant today as they were in the 1990s. The back cover of the first edition described how the contributors to Implausible Professions 'throw into question many of the most taken-for-granted assumptions on which the professionalisation" and commodification of psychotherapy and counselling are based. The essays display the creative pluralism and passionate vitality which typify the best aspects of therapeutic work.' This edition contains a completely new editorial Introduction and Conclusion, updating the story to 2011. For those engaging with the politics of professionalisation for the first time, or wanting to refresh themselves about the reasons why counselling and psychotherapy are in principle 'implausible professions', this text is even more indispensable than it was in 1997.
About the Author
Richard House Ph.D. is Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy and Counselling, Department of Psychology and the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University. A trained counsellor and psychotherapist and a therapy practitioner since 1990, his books include In, Against and Beyond Therapy (PCCS, 2010), Therapy Beyond Modernity (Karnac, 2003), Against and For CBT (co-editor Del Loewenthal, PCCS, 2008) and Childhood, Well-being and a Therapeutic Ethos (co-editor Del Loewenthal, Karnac, 2009). Richard is a co-founder of the Independent Practitioners Network, in which he has participated since 1995, and of the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy against State Regulation. Richard is also a trained Steiner Kindergarten and class teacher, co-founding the 'Open EYE' early childhood campaign in 2007, and, with author Sue Palmer, co-orchestrating the two press Open Letters on 'toxic childhood' and 'play' in 2006 and 2007, helping to precipitate a global media debate about the state of childhood in modern technological culture. Nick Totton is a psychotherapist and trainer in private practice in Leeds, UK. Trained originally as a Reichian therapist, he now practises and teaches his own synthesis, Embodied-Relational Therapy, drawing on psychoanalysis and Process Oriented Psychology as well as on Reichian ideas. He has published The Water in the Glass: Body and Mind in Psychoanalysis (Rebus Press); Psychotherapy and Politics (Sage); Character and Personality Types (Open University Press, with Michael Jacobs; and Body Psychotherapy: An Introduction (Open University Press), as well as editing Psychoanalysis and the Paranormal: Lands of Darkness (Karnac). He is editor of the journal Psychotherapy and Politics International (Wiley). Nick is in a prospective member group (the Burley Group) of the Independent Practitioners' Network
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