Equality is a dangerous word. Everything and everybody is different from everything and everybody else. To stay in a state of open-mindedness is my basic premise. Every group has rules and regulations. The worst thing about them is the uniformity.
I have just joined The British Humanist Association, mainly because of my loathing of organised religion. I opened the envelope and two round badges popped out. I popped them straight into my waste basket. How could I walk around with the two messages that conveyed, ‘happy humanist’ and ‘good without god’ ? I treat the word ‘happy’ with great reservations, only as a state of mind that is one of many. Everything is defined by its opposite. Otherwise it cannot exist. A well-balanced human experiences both misery and happiness.
As for ‘good without god’ the word ‘good’ does not exist without the word ‘evil or bad’ and the word ‘god’ has as many different meanings as there are people in the world. My particular god is that of the philosopher Spinoza for whom ‘god is nature’, one of the best definitions I have come across.
After my first introduction to psychotherapy, the first book I ever read by Freud, when I was 18 years old, I have read everything I could find out about the subject. I knew one day I would be a psychotherapist. When I was in my sixties after my book business collapsed, I felt that the time was ripe. I knew I must get some sort of qualification. At that time anyone could give training or set up as a psychotherapist. Since I had a vast knowledge of many different methods, I decided to study NLP (neurolinguistic programming) which was relatively new and looked like fun. I joined another organisation that focused on hypnosis, because I am a natural hypnotist. I didn’t realise for decades that my gift for making myself invisible was auto-hypnosis which helped me through so many boring teachers.
After the failure of my business I took myself off for a trip round the world with the few thousand
pounds I had left. When I returned I set up in private practice and very soon had a good list of clients. At that time there were no regulations although many of the trainers had their own lists of rules.
Since psychotherapy is relatively new it is only recently that it has been a subjects for universities. When that happened the government began to take it seriously. That, of course, meant that sooner or later the government would interfere.
Now there is far too much interference in the medical profession, education and now psychotherapy. The UKCP was set up after I began my practice. I didn’t have to join, but it might be necessary once the government insisted.
It has taken the government a long time to know what to do with us. After 15 years I decided to give up my practice and get on with my writing and research instead. This was three years ago. I resigned from the UKCP Why? Because I was very dissatisfied. First, I resented having to be supervised when I was working in my own way and getting very good results, and I resented the movement to regulate which method was most important. CBT was the choice. You may notice in newspapers articles that tell us that we need more CBT practitioners. Don’t believe a word of it.
Now students who want to join the profession are being led by the nose to do a four year course which is ridiculous. Psychotherapy is not a science but it is treated as such. First class therapists and first class teachers are not made by university degrees. They are creative beings just as much as musicians, writers and all other creative beings who work in their own way.