ABSTRACT
Daniel Hogan and Richard Mowbray show how statutory regulation will very probably restrict the supply of practitioners; inflate costs of services; stifle innovation in education and training; discriminate unnecessarily; and lead to defensive therapeutic practice. The overriding rationale offered by both government and therapy institutions alike for the introduction of statutory regulation is that of providing a means of protecting the public from practitioners who are deemed unfit to practise and who could cause harm to those who seek their services. Moreover, and as Mowbray has pointed out, the various cases of abuse discussed by Jeffrey Masson in his well-known book Against Therapy were mainly perpetrated by involved practitioners who were already licensed professionals, and their registered professional status within the community if anything made it harder to challenge their abusive behaviour. Another compelling challenge to the “public protection” rationale is that potentially abusive practitioners who are determined to abuse will simply find another way of doing it.
