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The Psychotherapist and the Professional Complaint: The Shadow Side of Therapy

Editor : Adah Sachs, Editor : Valerie Sinason

Reviews and Endorsements

This outstanding book is an update on where the mental health profession’s complaints system is now. Its timely analysis follows in the wake of prior work on reform, which include the attempt in 2001 at the House of Lords to statutorily regulate psychotherapists in the UK.
Professor Ann Casement, LP, Past-Chair UKCP

Patients who feel hurt or even abused and exploited by their treatment, need a place to be heard and for appropriate action to follow. Therapists who have been complained about, also need a place where they can be heard. All too often accrediting bodies try to be both a protector and a prosecutor. This engaging and authoritative book draws together thoughtful contributions from barristers, NHS psychiatrists, union members and therapists who have been complained about, and seriously questions whether complaints processes are currently adequate to the task.
Professor Sheila the Baroness Hollins, Former President of the Royal College of Psychiatry, Former President, the British Medical Association (BMA)

This book is not about criminal exploitation and abuse of patients, which requires the law rather than a complaint system. Rather, it is about what happens when something goes wrong in the therapist patient relationship, or some past trauma cannot be resolved or tolerated and how these situations can increasingly lead to a complaint. What happens then? A complaint is something many Psychotherapists and counsellors are ill equipped to understand or face. In this book, Psychotherapists, psychiatrists and barristers ask if the system is fit for purpose. It is timely for it to be here with us when so many people now turn to complaints.
Dr Pat Frankish, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist, Former President, British Psychological Society (BPS)