Documente Academic
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Documente Cultură
je vous envoie la résolution de soutien pour nos collègues lacaniens en Grande-Bretagne, qui
sont menacés par une standardisation restrictive et une régulation accablante. Vous pouvez
signer la résolution par un message e-mail adressé à moi (praxismzw@web.de), avec votre
nom, domicile et profession. Je remercie beaucoup Gabrielle Devallet-Gimpel à Toulouse
d'avoir fait la traduction du texte allemand. Je vous demande à transmettre le texte, s.v.p.
Die Erstunterschreibenden:
Klaus Findl, bildender Künstler, Köln
Miriam Goretzki-Wagner, Coach, Bonn
Andreas Hammer, Dipl.-Psych., Köln
Fotini Ladaki-Schmidt, Dipl.-Psych., psychoanalytische Praxis, Köln
Béatrice Ludwig, Linguistin, Köln
Jean-Baptiste Mariaux, PhD., Köln
Dr. med. Michael Meyer zum Wischen, psychoanalytische Praxis, Köln
Karin Schlechter, bildende Künstlerin, Köln
Anhang (appendix):
PRESS RELEASE
Under proposed new government guidelines, most forms of psychoanalysis could become
illegal in 2009. The Government aims to regulate talking therapies next year and has already
started the process of assessing the field. The Health Professions Council has been given the
task of regulating talking therapies, with its partner Skills for Health (SfH) charged with
developing National Occupational Standards for therapeutic work. Nearly all the
psychotherapy and psychoanalytic organisations protested that HPC was inappropriate for
talking cures, yet this has been totally ignored and HPC imposed as the regulator.
The psychodynamic and psychoanalytic organisations in this country are already regulated by
two main bodies (UKCP and BPC) which have been developed through the profession over
the last twenty-five years. Each of the member organisations of UKCP and BPC has strict
codes of ethics, practice and complaints procedures, and is inspected periodically by the
regulatory body. Yet the new developments will render the existing regulatory structures for
the most part obsolete. With this comes a new vision of what psychodynamic and
psychoanalytic work actually is.
For HPC and SfH, psychoanalytic work is seen more as an intervention to be applied - like a
drug - TO patients than a long and painstaking work done BY patients. This view of therapy
as an external intervention is reflected in the government's plan to 'give' therapy to young
Muslims they suspect of harbouring aspirations to terrorism: psychotherapy becomes a tool of
social control rather than a choice made by the individual to explore their own life.
A consultation process was begun by SfH in 2007, and the results just published in draft
form.More than 450 rules have been listed for psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy.
They dictate every aspect of how therapists should organise their sessions, how they should
'monitor' themselves and how they should carry out their work. They go into minute detail
about the timing of interventions, the setting of the therapy, its aims - and even the expression
of appropriate 'feelings'. Such an application of externally-imposed rules - most of which were
expressly contraindicated by Freud, Jung and the analysts who followed, such as Klein, Lacan
and Winnicott - removes the very foundation on which such therapies are based, namely the
freedom of both parties to work together authentically and creatively. If these rules are
accepted, then it will no longer be possible for analysts - and many therapists - to work in this
country.
The SfH project shows how analytic work is being forced into the current culture of
outcomes, where everything can be predicted in advance and evaluated in relation to the
expected results. Analysis, however, involves an open-ended relationship, where results may
emerge that were never predicted or even thought of by the person in analysis. The very
distinction between conscious and unconscious motivation that lies at the heart of analytic
work is ignored by the proposed regulations which encourage a 'false self', a box-ticking
clinician, always fearful of being watched by the authorities and anxious to please them. If
analysis has an aim, it is to help patients free themselves from irrational forms of authority,
exactly those that now threaten to constrain the work of analysts.
According to the government roadmap, HPC will establish a list of reputable practitioners,
which will mean effectively those who adopt their particular formulations as to what
psychoanalysis is about. All the documentation published to date by HPC shows a serious
misunderstanding of the nature of analytic work, together with a new insistence on 'good
character' defined in highly rigid ways. If this goes ahead, then members of the public will no
longer have the freedom to choose their analyst. Rather, they will have to select a practitioner
from a list which only includes those who practise a particular form of therapy.
How did this situation come about after the long process of consultation with the profession?
The working parties at SfH which have drafted the new rules are made up almost exclusively
of members from one single highly partisan grouping, concerned to define psychoanalytic
psychotherapy in a very narrow frame. This narrow frame fits a particular technique
developed by the Chair of the SfH National Strategy Group together with the Chair of the SfH
Working Group known as 'Mentalization Based Therapy' (MBT). Some research shows
evidence for the value of this technique for particular NHS patient categories, but it represents
a tiny minority of the total psychoanalytic therapy that is undertaken, mostly in the private
sector. Its techniques and ethical framework are entirely opposed to most traditional
psychoanalytic work.
The Working Group and the National Strategy group, under these chairs, have excluded
contributions which do not meet this narrow frame. SfH had promised seats on the working
parties to representatives of other groupings, yet these were then withheld and SfH have
admitted that they have not chosen to develop their work democratically. Requests for
documents about the consultation process obtained under the Freedom of Information Act
have shown astonishing failure to follow proper procedures and the hijacking of the
consultation by a small and ambitious group of individuals.
Thousands of therapists have been writing to MPs and politicians about the current situation,
seeking a recognition of the fact that analytic work cannot be reduced to a set of rules to be
mechanistically applied to a patient with predictable outcomes, but involves an exploration of
the meaning of an individual's history which can never be guessed in advance. Analytic work,
for the majority of analysts, should be regulated by the bodies established by the profession
and not by the State.
1 July 2008