Careers article on psychotherapy was not balanced

BMJ 1999;318:1559 ( 5 June )

Letters

Careers article on psychotherapy was not balanced

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Key and Dare's article on psychotherapy failed to do justice either to an emerging medical speciality or to the broaderprofession of psychotherapy.¹ Instead, it was an account ofthe relation between the conservative psychoanalytical trainingand the medical profession. It might more accurately have beenentitled "doctors training as psychoanalysts in greaterLondon."

The most politically telling factor was the omission of reference to the UK Council for Psychotherapy, or its register ofpsychotherapists, which lists 4500 practitioners from a varietyof backgrounds including cognitive behaviour.² Instead, theauthors present the smaller British Confederation of Psychotherapist'sregister as "the" register of psychotherapists without indicatingthat it is maintained by one of two parties to a bitter politicalsplit. The British Confederation of Psychotherapy registers membersof a few select psychoanalytical organisations and is opposedto a unified profession. Given the bitterness of the disagreementthe omission cannot be . . . [Full text of this article]