War Breaks Out Between Psychotherapists and Psychologists

November 2001

By Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH

A war between the psychotherapeutic and psychological professions broke out in Australia in 2001 over the development and ratification of varying psychotherapists' credentials. In the UK, Europe and different states of the USA, registration of varying psychological bodies and psychotherapies is often more advanced than in Australia. This is probably because there are more people and a longer and more intense tradition of compulsory public identification of professionals. In Australia people have been more liberal and the culture is affected by philosophies from the East so influences are often esoteric or oriental, which have a shorter history of quantitative research and rely more on qualitative reporting understandable to the West.

Only Australia's physicians who are medical practitioners are paid out of the Medicare system for treating individuals. Generally psychology, psychotherapy, counselling, and many other complementary therapies are not reimbursable treatments. In the UK it is more likely that such practitioners qualify for funding so patients can choose those practitioners, and their treatment will often be paid for by the British National Health Service. However, private health insurance in Australia often funds treatments across a wide range of therapies.

The Australian psychologists broke away from being members of the British Psychological Society in the 1960s. Other therapies such as psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, counselling, clinical hypnotherapy, and combination therapies such as psychosynthesis are becoming more established and recognised. These therapies, which can have solely psychotherapeutic natures or be a combination of psychotherapeutic counselling and bodywork, have banded together under an organisation called the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA). Many professional organisations attached to therapy training schools have joined or are now are applying to become members of PACFA.

Because of the formation of PACFA and the launch of its new register to identify well recognised therapeutic practitioners, general practitioners of medicine and other professionals are more willing to refer patients to therapists who they see as being highly qualified in their own fields.

All this has unfortunately upset some professions who perhaps see therapists from PACFA as encroaching upon their professional territory. A top Australian psychiatrist told HypnosisAustralia Online that the psychiatry profession was not so happy about PACFA because it meant that patients were going elsewhere to therapists that were not necessarily medically qualified.

The Australian Psychological Society has responded to the publication of the PACFA register with hostility. It is refusing to circulate the PACFA register of practitioners with the information it sends out to its members and also refusing to take advertisements from psychotherapy training schools in its journal InPsyche. Furthermore the journal has also refused to take an advert from Psychoz Publications publicising their new psychotherapy training guide, which lists schools and colleges that train people to become psychotherapeutic and psychosomatic therapists. In the UK and US, psychological associations are happy to advertise schools which train clinicians specifically as psychotherapists in many disciplines, not necessarily being psychologists. There are some jobs that psychotherapists and psychosomatic therapists can do that psychologists are not trained to do and vice versa.

While many psychotherapists and psychosomatic therapists have been trained as psychologists, it is not essential. All such therapists do however have elements of their training that include varying forms of psychology. Despite one head of a psychotherapeutic training school having written twice to InPsyche to ascertain why the school's advert was refused, InPsyche has not issued it with a written reply in more than six months.

It may be that the APS does not consider members of PACFA sufficiently qualified to advertise in its journal; however, many psychotherapists and psychosomatic therapists who are not psychologists are equally or more academically qualified in their own field and on a practical level, than members of the APS.

It is hoped that this situation will be resolved in due course but at the moment many psychotherapeutic and psychosomatic training establishments are in the dark because the APS is refusing to explain its actions. It is hoped that the APS will review the situation and move to a position that is taken in the rest of the world where highly qualified and respected professionals trained in other fields recognise each other and do not boycott them without giving a reason.

©HypnosisAustralia, November 2001