ABSTRACT
Training and practice in the psychological therapies, the organisations and systems that seek to facilitate support for clients in the face of political and economic pressures, have a responsibility to take note of, and react accordingly to, these wider factors. In counselling and psychotherapy, the clinical and supervisory frames, as containers, can offer unique and privileged experiences of relational intimacy, as professional practitioner and fellow temporal human, being alongside and with others’ need. Competing political and economic pressures that demand Darwinian notions of survival, have seemingly fed a sense of heightened existential anxiety, particularly evident in the UK with the consequences of the banking and financial crises. Some practices in the helping and caring professions have perhaps become ossified, overly determined by dependency on lead bodies, training institutions and universities that together rely on their competing labels of professional identities.
