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All psychic phenomena have a personal and a collective component. This paper is an attempt to understand some of the anxieties besetting the profession of psychotherapy in terms of ubiquitous patterns of primate behaviour. It has arisen from the experience of establishing a training in psychotherapy within the UK National Health Service. This is a training in what might be termed psychoanalytical, or psychodynamic, psychotherapy: the issue of which name to use lies at the heart of the paper. The difficulty arose not so much because of internal uncertainty, as because of anxieties about identity apropos the profession as a whole. In the event, we settled the issue of ‘what type of training are we?’ fairly easily, but with some disquiet about the process. This process will be analysed in a way that throws light on the way that names and theory are used within the culture of psychotherapy. On a personal level, the paper is an attempt to exorcize material that has preoccupied me at various times during two years of difficult negotiation and course development. The material is curiously compelling (for reasons that will become clear), but it is ultimately a psychological cul-de-sac.
There has long been recognition of the need for high quality training in psychoanalytically based psychotherapy within the public sector (Richards & Murphy 1995). Since late 1995 a training in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in Health Service Settings has been developed by an association of NHS Psychotherapy Services in the old Oxford Region, now known as the Four Counties. We provide a Master's programme collaboratively with Oxford Brookes' University, and are affiliated to the UPA, through which we are undergoing accreditation to enable graduates to register with UKCP. The course is well supported by local NHS Trusts, and our first intake will graduate in 2001.
It has been a considerable achievement to get this far. The development has involved coordinating j