We believe RET therapists should take quite seriously the criticisms levelled at RET in Clarke's ‘Personal View’ in the British Journal of Psychotherapy, 7(1), pp. 86-93. We speak as therapists who utilise and value RET in our day-to-day psychotherapeutic practice yet find ourselves distinctly uncomfortable with, and dissatisfied with, some potentially insensitive, aggressive and belittling aspects of RET.

Observation of RET ‘experts’ in action, feedback from teaching seminars and comments from patients, all suggest that, like other brief active directive and focal therapies, great care and sensitivity need to be exercised when utilising RET as otherwise therapists run a high risk of traumatising patients, damaging the therapeutic relationship and forcing patients from therapy. For this reason we require RET trainees to have had substantial previous training in psychodynamic therapy or counselling as we have found this equips them with the basis psychotherapeutic and