Following a Freedom of Information enquiry from The College of Psychoanalysts-UK, information about how the different groups which were formed to discuss and develop the NOS for Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and copies of emails between Skills for Health staff and those they commissioned to set up those groups were released. These clearly demonstrated political manipulation of the groups’ memberships.
Two groups were set up to develop NOS for the Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic modality. The Expert Reference Group (ERG), which was charged with assessing the literature available on which NOS could be developed. The criteria for admissible literature was so narrowly focussed on manualisable treatment programs and research studies using Randomised Control Trial methodologies, that there were no psychoanalytic texts at all in the list of material to be drawn on. The members of ERG, all of whom were carefully selected and personally invited, came from a closed list: the profession and its representative organisations were not consulted or advised of this group’s formation. Nor were service user organisations. The ERG appeared to do little except go along with the wishes of its chair and the researchers who were his departmental colleagues. From this narrow list a set of draft NOS were drawn up by another personally selected colleague, and put to the second group for development. This second group, the Modality Working Group (MWG), was also overwhelmingly weighted in favour of the same narrow political grouping. The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy’s (UKCP) representatives from its psychoanalytic section (Council of Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis, CPJA) have since produced a report describing the deep flaws in the process and stating the CPJA’s rejection of the NOS as a description of psychoanalytic practice, let alone as a statement of best practise. This rejection of the NOS has been repeated in different words and for various additional reasons by many expert readers, including Professor Andrew Samuels and Professor Bernard Burgoyne.
Project Overview
Let us look first at the section titled ‘Project Overview’. There are several statements which appear at first glance to be comprehensive and extensively unequivocal, but in fact are hardly so. The first sentence is a clear example: “Skills for Health are working with practitioners, professional organisations and experts to develop National Occupational Standards (NOS) for Psychological Therapists and Counsellors.” This is deliberately misleading. It suggests that the full range of practitioners and their professional organisations have been involved in the consultation, which is incorrect. Stakeholder groups, individuals and user groups have been systematically excluded from the process, despite being listed in initial draft membership working groups. They were made to disappear by those directing the SfH consultation, as is documented on the website of The College of Psychoanalysts-UK.
