Glamour remedy without guarantees

It has been described as a new religion and its practitioners as "false priests" but the allure of therapy is difficult to deny. It is no longer perceived as a wacky, Californian pre-occupation, but as a practical solution to personal and social p roblems from cigarette smoking and low self-esteem to more serious psychological traumas.

Therapy has the added glamour of high-profile patients such as the Princess of Wales, Woody Allen, John Cleese, and most of Hollywood. To be a therapist is to be at the cutting edge of modern life - and anybody can set up a practice.

Oliver James, a clinical psychologist, is one of many professionals angered by the "abuses of professional position by charlatans" who advertise various forms of therapy with no training or minimal experience. He says the Government's reluctance to introduce a national register of qualified therapists, with statutory back-up, is putting thousands of people who genuinely need help at risk of financial exploitation or physical and sexual abuse.

Stephen White of the British Psychological Society agrees: "You're dealing with people's mental make-up and you can do a hell of a lot of damage if you get it wrong." Ivan Tyrell, director of the European Therapy Studies Institute, says that bad practicecomes about because of ignorance or because a therapist wants to impose his or her beliefs on a client.

A spokeswoman for the British Association for Counselling (BAC) says the onus is on the public to satisfy themselves that the person they seek help from is suitably qualified.

At the very least, a therapist should be a member of one of the three main bodies for accredited therapists; the BAC, the British Confederation of Psychotherapists or the UK Council for Psychotherapists. This may not be a guarantee of good therapy; people who just have an interest in counselling can join the BAC at its lowest level.

The Department of Health is in consultation with these organisations and others over the introduction of a register, and a tentative deadline of1996 has been set. But Dr James and others are pessimistic, believing that the Government's view is to "let the therapists regulate themselves".

The term therapy covers an array of treatments from straightforward counselling, psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy to the more exotic, such as rebirthing - a belief that most problems stem from experiences in the womb - or rolfing, manipulation of the softtissues to release long-held traumas.

Some forms of therapy are more worrying than others: primary-cause therapists, for example, are now practising in this country. They blame 99 per cent of all cot deaths on sexual abuse of babies, and claim that most adults suppress memories of such abuse, resulting in problems ranging from short-sightedness to stammering.

Fay Weldon, the novelist, last year launched a devastating attack on the cult of therapy as a cure-all for what she views as fundamentally healthy human problems. She accused therapists of forcing an "emotional correctness" on society.

Her view was scarcely objective. Ms Weldon blamed the break-up of her 30-year marriage on her husband's visits to a hypnotherapist, and chronicled the event in her novel, Affliction. There are reports that Ron Weldon, a jazz trumpeter, walked out after being told that his wife's star sign was not compatible with his own.