ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether and how psychotherapy may have something to offer beyond the consulting room; whether this living craft can participate in "the great process of change", named by cultural critic Raymond Williams as "the Long Revolution". It argues that the practice of relational psychotherapy has a part to play in such a Long Revolution. Psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, counselling, and related disciplines and activities, are beginning to change the way the authors think about human interaction and relationship and may indeed be revolutionary, if realised and accepted within the field of public and political policy. Psychotherapy arguably suffers from being a living craft, a set of relational skills which only come to life when utilised in a carefully managed conversation with an Other—person, couple, family, or group. Psychotherapy, counselling, and psychoanalysis are also marginalised in terms of professional status, because of the discipline's ambiguous relationship to the prevalent requirements for "evidence-based" practice.
