ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a critique of how bad evidence can lead to bad thinking and the dangers inherit in that. It explores a glimpse into the world of shaping experiences with clients, to moving in and between the various positions as researcher, therapist researcher, collaborator and researcher participant. The book examines the shifting of these positions into being one of a group coordinating therapeutic, helpful and sustainable service without the state to aid this. It considers problems that have led to a need for critical psychotherapy and counselling together with some of their implications for the training of psychological therapists, if not psycho-social or community therapists, so that instead of increasingly becoming part of the problem of the therapeutic state we could become part of its antidote. The book provides some critical reflections, asking questions about the key concept of the ‘therapeutic state’.
