Confused or Invisible

Dear John Rowan

I am sorry I have been the cause of your feeling invisible again. It certainly wasn't my intention.

My article wasn't meant to be an overview of the Rugby Conference as a whole but only about the bizarre language which made definitions and communication so confused. This, I experienced in the analytic and analytical psychotherapy sections in which I was involved. I was under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that your section of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy was relatively harmonious, its language intelligible and, in the context of my paper, unremarkable; in the same way that successful marriages or women who haven't been raped are unremarkable when these subjects are under discussion.

The first part of my paper, ‘Language and the Formation of Groups’ was supposed to be about groups in general including yours as much as anyone else's, but perhaps it doesn't apply to yours?

I used the term ‘coveted’ in relation to the terms psychoanalyst and Jungian analyst deliberately because that was exactly what I meant. I said that the ‘term analysis has become a colloquial term notable for its high prestige value rather than its specific meaning.’ Its specific meaning has got buried and needs to be disinterred. At the Rugby Conference its prestige value in our section was particularly evident. I was deploring rather than condoning this because the political issue had obscured any discussion about what we actually do. Although some organisations took an independent view their voices were hard to hear amid the clamour of the others.

I quite agree with you that we should be discussing what we do but the subject of my article was the confused language which bedevils our understanding of this so it was naturally more about who we are and how we express ourselves. I hope that now the ‘United Kingdom Standing Conference of Psychotherapy’ has been inaugurated we shall all feel less threatened and able to discuss what we actually do.

I am sorry there wasn't a ‘jot’