Come see me at Cardiff Skeptics in the Pub

I’ve been invited to speak to the Cardiff branch of Skeptics in the Pub. It’ll be at Porter’s bar on Bute Terrace, on Monday 15th September at 7.30pm. I’ll be speaking on the topic, “Dangerous Methods: The Abuses of Psychotherapy.”

The Facebook event page is here. 

Therapist who breached sexual boundaries returns to psychotherapy practice

Back in February I commented on a worryingly lenient decision by the UK Council for Psychotherapy to give only a 6 month suspension to a therapist who had committed serious sexual misconduct. Rob Waygood, a Jungian and transpersonal psychotherapist, admitted having sex with a client.

The suspension is now over, and Waygood is now back on the UKCP register. He has put his website back up and has announced he’s practising again.

The Palace Gate abuse case, the media and therapy regulation

Following on from the Palace Gate story (which I’ve covered extensively on this blog) appearing in the Mail on Sunday, it’s now also been reported in the Plymouth Evening Herald. After months of rumbling around social media, the abusive behaviour of John Clapham (and his co-director Lindsey Talbott) is now a mainstream story in both the national and local press.

So, what does this mean for the debate on psychotherapy regulation?

Why we told our story to The Mail on Sunday

[Guest post by Amanda Williamson and Tina Welch]

[The Palace Gate abuse case, which I’ve covered on this blog, has now been reported by the Mail on Sunday. Here, the complainants tells us why they’ve gone public with their experiences – Phil]

Note that the title says ‘told’ rather than ‘sold’. This is important as cynics may proffer that we did it to make money. We can assure you that it wasn’t done for publicity either. Both of us are very wary of the impact that sharing our story may have on our personal and professional lives. Taking Phoenix Counselling to a professional conduct hearing has already cost us both heavily, in personal, professional and financial terms.

 

We want to make it absolutely clear that our motivation consists of two clear aims:

 

Nurses have enough to deal with without body-shaming

This morning I clicked on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website to discover an article by Christian Pattison giving a novel criticism of the nursing profession. We’re all too fat.

If you go anywhere near the NHS, you can’t fail to see it. The woman who marches you over to the scales and carefully records your weight, the man who asks you to roll up your sleeve and tells you to expect a “sharp scratch”: what they often have in common – apart from a desire to help – is that they’re pretty damn big.

Oh dear. Where to start?