Editorial

The first four papers in this issue of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy were given at an APP Conference on 22nd November 1986 entitled ‘Creating Psychotherapy Services in the NHS’. The Conference allowed an examination of some of the ways in which psychotherapists can have their work in institutions limited or restricted by being pressed into stereotyped roles. A number of different approaches to analysing the forces that are operating were presented in order to generate debate about becoming more effective when involved in negotiating for resources for psychotherapy within the National Health Service.

A full report of this Conference appeared in the first issue of the APP Newsletter in March 1987 and in this Dr Bell expressed his concern that when examining the position of psychotherapists as negotiators there should not be an underestimation of the opposition and disinterest in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy within the policy making departments of the health and social services in this country.

This is not mirrored in other countries and is not always recognised by the public whose awareness of psychotherapy and what it can offer is restricted at source. Only a small minority of patients ever have the opportunity of an assessment consultation with a psychotherapist either because there is none available within their own district or because they are not in contact with staff who include it in their options.

The APP is at a point now of gathering together the suggestions that have emerged from its conferences in order to have a strategy of its own for promoting the understanding of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and its various applications in the National Health Service. The recent reviews of the Tavistock Clinic and Portman Clinic have provided new insights into the priorities and preoccupations of the senior political and administrative levels of planning in the Health Service and these experiences can inform the planning of the political lobbying that will be needed to