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Dear Sir
Liam Clarke has done it again! I don't know why you print his diatribes which are lacking in coherence and really quite ignorant.
I take only one section of his latest outpouring, headed ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’. Clarke says (p. 240):
Certainly, the humanist therapists (so called) seem to revel in a world which both behaviourist and psychoanalytic groups have rejected: instead of a deterministic reduction (of people) to the haphazard status of response mechanisms or the driven status of conscious dupe (both these schemes aspire to scientific credibility) we are given a secular religious art, a ‘feel good’ approach to living, where the power of ‘emotions in relation’ (not too much intellect here) overcomes all adversity.
First, we do not call ourselves ‘humanist’ but ‘humanistic’. This is a matter of history and practice, and it helps to distinguish us from the secular humanists who have quite a different set of beliefs. Second, we do not offer a secular religious art (whatever that may be). Third, we do not offer a ‘feel good’ approach to living nor do I know any humanistic psychotherapy text which suggests this. Fourth, I do not recognise the quote ‘emotions in relation’ and do not believe that this is the secret of therapy or any very good clue to therapy.
This ignorance seems quite wilful because there was a paper on humanistic psychotherapy in this very journal (VoL 9, No. 1, Autumn , pp. 74-83) which is not referred to at all by Clarke, a reading of which might have obviated some of these mistakes. It gets worse (p. 240):