ABSTRACT
The ‘talking/listening cure’ is considered by the public and many health professionals as an imprecise, expensive, self-indulgent and slow route to psychological health and welfare. Counsellors and psychotherapists are divided about the morality and the efficacy of short-term psychotherapy and counselling. The critics of psychotherapy and counselling increase as the issues of abuse of power, crude and subtle, are debated: ‘Therapists have put us on the couch for long enough; it’s time we put them in the dock’ (Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian, 24 Feb. 1994).
