Editorial

Training is a crucial issue which, at the same time, and perhaps for that reason, is the most contentious within British psychotherapy. Concerns about standards of training and practice have surfaced so strongly they have split the Standing Conference. A preliminary notice of the formation of the British Confederation of Psycho-Analytic Psychotherapy was published in the last issue. The Standing Conference itself also remains confident as the outgoing Chairman's address, in this issue, relates. * The split, bitter though it has been, needs calm appraisal.

Nearly two years ago, the Guild of Psychotherapists held a Study Day on fundamental issues of training psychotherapy. We are pleased to publish three of the papers presented there. Jonathon Pedder's paper addressed various points of ongoing discussion most prominently the fields from which candidates for psychotherapy training come. The debate centres on whether psychotherapists should have trained previously in one of the mental health professions - the so-called ‘core professions’. Naturally many doctors and psychologists think so. The temperature of the debate has been stoked up by the approach of Brussels and looming European conformity. These are momentous issues which readers will need to debate. Both Andrew Samuels and Karl Figlio contribute to the calmer reflection that needs to be the basis from which political heat should be generated. Both are exercised by the diversity of psychotherapy approaches and of psychotherapists themselves. Figlio is concerned about our need to externalise an objective assessment of good/bad practice and training and how misguided that endeavour is. The problem is to assess from the inside, and he attempts to scan many of the issues arising from that posture. Samuels' plea is for an even-handedness to difference, and to the frictions inevitably attendant on differences. Elitism can supervene instead of difference, with very distorting judgements on the needs of patients and of tr