This outstanding book is an update on where the mental health profession's complaints system is now. Its timely analysis follows in the wake of prior work on reform, which include the attempt in 2001 at the House of Lords to statutorily regulate psychotherapists in the UK. (Alderdice/Casement et al.) -- Professor Ann Casement, LP, Past-Chair UKCP. Patients should be safe and have the power to complain where things go wrong. Equally, so should the therapist. Curiously, there are no procedures in place to protect the psychotherapist from being abused by their patients. This omission is particularly glaring regarding complaints: the current complaint procedure, unintentionally, punishes even the innocent therapist. In The Psychotherapist and the Professional Complaint, the authors explore this dilemma with sensitivity and rigour. Amongst these chapters, the contributors examine how to constructively deal with conflict, the role of professional unions in protecting their members, and the current complaint procedures in NHS services. This hopeful book provides essential support for professionals and policymakers in the field of psychotherapy.
Adah Sachs is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, previously NHS consultant and psychotherapy lead for the London borough of Redbridge. She has authored over 100 conference papers, book chapters and journal articles and is a fellow of the ISSTD. Dr Valerie Sinason is a widely published writer and psychoanalyst. She is President of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, Founder Director and now Patron of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and on the Board of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) where she received a lifetime achievement award in 2016. The Truth About Trauma and Dissociation: Everything You Didn't Want to Know and Were Afraid to Ask (Confer 2020) won the Frank W Putnam award. Trauma and Memory: The Science and the Silenced was co-edited with Ashley Conway for Routledge (2021).
ABOUT THE AUTHORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS INTRODUCTION: The psychotherapist and the professional complaint by Adah Sachs and Valerie Sinason Part 1: Complaints: A clinical perspective 1. The psychotherapist, the profession and the professional complaint -- Adah Sachs 2. When healing is halted by fear -- Fiona Farley 3. Professional membership bodies: Who will watch the watchmen? -- Anne Kearns 4. A constructive way of dealing with conflict-- Kay Beaumont 5. Complaints in the field of dissociative disorders: six key categories -- Valerie Sinason Part 2: Complaints: The historical perspective 6. Filing psychoanalytical complaints in the pre-ethical era: from verbal assaults to the crushing of the larynx -- Brett Kahr 7. Reflections on a 25-year-old professional complaint -- Leslie Ironside 8. Then and now - a historical perspective Emerald Davies in interview with Valerie Sinason Part 3 Complaints: Towards the future 9. The unique nature of boundaries in psychoanalytic therapy and the implication for ethics and complaints procedures -- Philip Stokoe 10. Complaints and incident procedures for NHS clinicians -- Romanie Dekker and Rajnish Attavar 11. Uses, misuses and abuses of fitness to practise processes -- Philip Cox 12. The Psychotherapy and Counselling Union: therapists supporting therapists through complaints processes - emergent learning and new possibilities for regulatory change -- Philip Cox, Richard Bagnall-Oakle and Sasha Kaplin 13. Reforming the disciplinary quagmire -- Julie Norris and Andrew Campbell REFERENCES INDEX
