Ipnosis

The Independent Practitioner Network has a diligant web wizard: Denis Postle. Denis has developed this site over the years to support his ongoing campaign against state regulation of the psy-practice and to maintain a place for independence. Last October he invited me to be a guest editor and now we have developed a series of pages that support some work I have been doing with colleagues to try to shed light on the questions around audit, regulation, and evidence based medicine. In short, we are asking : what on earth is going on?

If you follow the link in the title of this entry you will end up on some sister pages of this blog, hosted by eIpnosis. There you will find the unfolding story and tales from along the way towards a meeting that will be held in September. To begin, there are two very interesting interviews, one with Anthropologist Marilyn Strathern, and the other with Accountant Michael Power. They were the beginning of a series of meetings that some of us have been having in order to get our bearings in the strange times we are in.

Why psy-practitioners need to think about the government

In 2001 the Health Professionals Order was passed through the Privy Council. This gave powers to some new institutional forms. One of these is the Health Professionals Council. The HPO2001 vested powers in the HPC and set the wheels in motion to employ people, pay them salaries, allocate budgets, rent offices, and start a process to enlist a huge number of people onto a centralised register. The people employed in the HPC are new to the field, and don't know much about the professions they will regulate. They don't need to. In fact, according to the logic of the HPO2001, its best if they do not. For to know something about the practice, according to the logic of HPO2001, is ipso facto to be prejudiced.

In September 2008, when the Parliament returns from recess, there will be a conversation about an ammendment to the HOP2001 which intends to give more power to the HPC. If this happens, then lots of things will follow, not all of them unpredictable. 

The law sets off from the wrong place. It assumes that professionals are not competent, are self interested and that the public needs to be protected from them. But it also assumes that there is a group of people who are innocent, never incompetent or self interested, and these are the ones who have been given the power. Ironically these are bureaucrats in the employ of the politicians. 

My main concern here is that the kinds of logic behind the current processes will have a destructive effect and expose everyone to the full force of market forces just at the time when globalisation is at its most potent. Commodification races ahead almost unchecked.

Professionals are part of the social fabric that can protect the people from the brutality of market and other forces. It is probably not a good idea to wreck that.