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Dear Editor
I feel reluctant to enter the debate about The College of Psychoanalysts because of the level of conflict and hostility any contribution is likely to generate from one quarter or another. Yet, in a way, this is just the point I want to make. Notwithstanding any other motives behind the setting up of The College of Psychoanalysts, it would be disingenuous of its founders to claim that they were surprised that it has had such a divisive impact. Its explicit intention is to mount an attack on the long-standing convention in this country, whereby, at least within the psychotherapy profession, the term ‘psychoanalyst’ is restricted to members of the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Outside the profession, of course, in a world in which psychotherapists are regularly called counsellors and many people do not understand the difference between a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a psychotherapist, our political disputes over nomenclature have all the hallmarks of a bunch of angels squabbling over who is entitled to a place on the head of the psychoanalytic pin.
I do have some sympathy for the Lacanians who find themselves in the anomalous position of being the only Lacanian analysts in Europe (or the rest of the world?) unable to call themselves psychoanalysts. I feel less sympathy for the psychoanalytic psychotherapists who wish to assume this title since their existing title, while unwieldy, has become standard usage over the past 20 years. If some psychoanalytic psychotherapists start calling themselves psychoanalysts while the majority do not, this can only add to the already existing confusion both inside and outside the profession.
I find many of Haya Oakley's arguments (BJP 20(4): 574-576) disingenuous in a similar way. She argues that if we want to stop psychoanalytic psychotherapy being restricted to psychologists and medics, we should all stand together behind the banner of psychoanalysis as the French have done. Yet given that the label of psychoanalyst is so