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Psychotherapy Section

By Diane Clare (Chair, Psychotherapy Section)

I have pleasure in presenting the Chair’s report to the Section for the past year from 27 January 2007 to 8 March 2008.

At the last Annual General Meeting we held a workshop day on the subject of Off the couch, what does Narrative therapy have to offer? This was well attended and my colleague Polly Kaiser and I provided an overview of narrative ideas followed by an interactive workshop to demonstrate their application to group work and to grief and loss in particular. Two papers were published in the Psychotherapy Review outlining this work and another to publish the results of our Membership Survey, which had influenced the theme of our last AGM and has also influenced the work in the summer conference and for today’s AGM.

Council’s approval in 2001 to set up a Register of Psychologists Specialising in Psychotherapy marked the recognition of psychotherapy, within the Society, as a practice speciality of psychologists. The Section and the Register promote the understanding and development of psychotherapy within the Society and the possibilities of collaboration are actively explored. In this context the Section hosted a day conference in June entitled Allying Psychology and Psychotherapy: Fruitful inquiries. Many thanks to both Sheelagh Strawbridge and Ralph Goldstein for organising this successful event and to Trevor Butt and his discussant Simon du Plockk and to Vic Sedlak and his discussant Ralph Goldstein (replacing Mary Target due to her unexpected absence). Again the texts of these interesting and thought provoking papers have appeared in the Review.

It was also at this time that we bade a fond farewell to Ralph Goldstein who has made such a valuable contribution to the Section over so many years providing wisdom and warm humour to our many endeavours and in particular to his involvement as our Honorary Treasurer and as Editor of the Review. The Review has continued to go from strength to strength thanks to Adrian Hemmings who has taken over the editing since Ralph departed and the Review has continued to provide a good range of interesting papers across the year and long may this continue. We are grateful to Ho Law our incoming Honorary Treasurer for so quickly stepping into Ralph’s shoes.

I would also like to acknowledge the valuable and enthusiastic involvement of our most recent Committee member who is Jan Squires who joined us consequent to last year’s AGM.

This year's AGM sees some departures including that of Jo-anne Carlyle our Honorary Secretary and my thanks to Jo-anne for all her help and of course to the outgoing Vice Chair, Mary Target along with committee member Kay Hayes who are all standing down. Our thanks to all of you for the work you have done for the Section.

I would like to make a special mention for our dear friend and colleague, Phil Richardson. His input to the Section and to psychotherapy is legendary and he has touched many of our lives and the lives of others with his wit, wisdom and humanity over the years. It was with deep shock that we heard of his serious ill health and thus his need to tender his resignation from the Committee, which was received with understanding and a deep sense of sadness. Following his death in late 2007, our thoughts and hopes are with him and his family and we have between us developed a collection of our cherished memories of him and his work and the legacy he has left to all of us through his tireless contributions over the years. In particular the event in late November/early December 2007 leading to the Savoy Declaration is testimony to the principles which Phil stood for and I trust we will take this work forward in our various ways as a way of honouring his work and to support research, practice and development of psychotherapy for the future.

This year's AGM sees the election of some new members and new roles for many. We are also putting a proposal to the membership to consider adapting the rules for the current and future Committee membership with particular reference to a more consistent arrangement the time commitments of the office bearers.

I am particularly delighted to be have a very able colleague to whom I can hand over the responsibilities of the chair. Angela Douglas has served so well as Chair Elect in the past year, often offering me support in the numerous e-mail, teleconference and actual meetings held across the year and who I know will bring a further dimension to the developing fresh approach which I have had the opportunity to help take forward with the Committee.

The AGM is taking place this year once more as part of a one-day conference. The theme for this conference was deferred from autumn and we are of the view that it may be more realistic to hold just 2 main events each year. We have noted how more challenging it is to hold any more than this given all the competing demands of time, reducing CPD allocation for people in NHS settings and indeed the competition of a number of exciting events on offer. The Survey led to us taking the step of holding the AGM outside of London. This workshop addresses a contemporary theme of what psychotherapy has to offer to working in teams. We consider this timely and a further step to the papers presented earlier this year. We trust this event proves both enjoyable and helpful for practice development and that we attract a broad range of interested psychologists and psychotherapists including some of the new generation of practitioners.

May I take this opportunity to say how much I appreciated the honour vested in me being elected as your Chair and I would like to think that I have played some part in the continued evolving of the Section’s work as part of a wider endeavour to bringing psychotherapy theory and fruitful enquiry into contemporary practice?