You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Dear Editor
I couldn't believe my eyes when I read the article by Moli Paul and Gill Bluck (1997). It was in the section entitled ‘Training Experiences in Psychotherapy’, but I didn't find any training in the article. I just found an extraordinary situation where two doctors were thrown into doing ‘psychodynamic’ psychotherapy with no training at all. They did have supervision, and hence some kind of feedback, but even this was not based on their actual performance, but only on their notes. I seriously wonder if the Uffculme Clinic have not gone collectively mad. This is not, repeat not, the way to do training in psychotherapy. If the Clinic had wanted to institute such a practice, they could easily have consulted established training centres within the UKCP or the BCP for advice and assistance. But to ask people to carry out psychodynamic psychotherapy with no personal analysis and no skills training cannot be right. The prospect of seeing doctors ‘progressing into a career in this specialty’ (p. 222) on the basis of non-training like this fills me with horror.
Yours sincerely
John Rowan
London