The document entitled Consultation on the development of National Occupational Standards for Psychological Therapies was published by The Sector Skills Council for Health and may be accessed from the Skills For Health website.
The following document is from The College of Psychoanalysts to Skills for Health in response to the above consultation document, to which it refers:
Psychological Therapies Consultation
Response of The College of Psychoanalysts – UK
14th February 2007
General Comments:
The development of National Occupational Standards for psychological therapies represents a commendable attempt to place them in a structure which will define competencies in as flexible a manner as possible. However, this task involves the negotiation of certain basic ideas that are philosophically opposed to pragmatic definition and the framework as it currently stands.
In this response, we will make some general comments about the nature of psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and then address specific points.Psyhoanalytic therapy or psychoanalysis entails the establishment of a particular relationship between therapist and patient, particular both in the sense of its difference from other types of relationship and in its uniqueness to each therapeutic dyad. This relationship is based not only on communication which is conscious, but more prevalently on the search for unconscious communication. There is a fundamental assumption that what the patient wants may not be – often indeed is not – what the patient might need in order to work through his or her difficulties.