and psychotherapy
professionals

A response to ‘To resist is to exist’ by Martin Kemp and Eliana Pinto |
| "The recent spate of correspondence over the publication in Therapy Today of ‘To resist is to exist’ by Martin Kemp and Eliana Pinto (March 2009) has raised the ire of many readers, despite the BACP statement that BACP ‘has no position or policy with regard to Middle East politics’" |
Trauma: the unreported casualty of war |
| "In the March issue of this journal, two psychotherapists wrote about the psychological impact of military occupation on the Palestinian people. In response, David Bedein reports from Sderot on the effects of Palestinian rocket fire on the city's residents" |
Palestine: to resist is to exist |
| "We have received an unprecedented amount of correspondence, both negative and positive, in reponse to last month's article 'To resist is to exist'. More of this can be read here (see 'related articles, right)" |
To resist is to exist |
| "Notes on the psychological impact of military occupation in Palestine" |
I am a child and young person’s counsellor and a member of BACP. At present I am working towards accreditation. It is a long and arduous task, but I am working with determination and am actually enjoying it.
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I am a child and young person’s counsellor and a member of BACP. At present I am working towards accreditation. It is a long and arduous task, but I am working with determination and am actually enjoying it. I am writing because I feel like an expert on all the criteria for accreditation at the moment, so when I received my eagerly awaited Therapy Today this month I was quite shocked at the political nature of the front cover and the leading article.
I was under the impression that equality was a central aspect to our work as well as confidentiality and naming no names. By entering into the political arena, don’t we become biased towards one side or another and start naming and blaming? I thought that was the complete antithesis of the BACP ethos, or am I filling out the forms incorrectly? I thought it was safe to be a member of BACP, now I don’t feel so sure.
I am not saying that the article has no reality, but I thought we dealt with reality as a perception for different people so that we can understand how it feels for them, rather than commenting on who owns what and what belongs to whom. If I went into the playground and tried to sort out the battles there using politics I would have to start a United Nations. People perceive war in many different ways and surely those are the issues we should be thinking about. Isn’t it our task to think about what makes people go to war from a psychological standpoint and then to consider the casualties of it from all sides?
Judith Sonnenberg