This article by Lori Gottlieb makes sobering reading. We have seen how the trend to supposedly evidence based practice has led to cognitive work achieving a special dominance in psychotherapy services and here we see how various forms of coaching are superseding therapy practice. Actually there is nothing wrong with coaching per se. What is more disturbing is the squeezing out of work in depth in favour of targeted problem solving.

The truth is that therapy in depth is actually a form of spiritual transformation and it will only ever be a minority that will under-take it. Buddha did not try to convert the whole world to a mass religion, he tried, rather, to cultivate a cadre of people who could be a leaven in society. There will be a few with but little dust in their eyes.

Perhaps part of the problem is that psychotherapy has tried to be a profession within the frame of a meritocratic society. Get your certificate, join and institute and set up shop is a formula that, on the one hand, makes therapy available as a purchasable commodity, yet, at the same time, and by the same token, makes a matter of the heart into a matter of the pocket.

In the modern world, money is the common measure of worth. Sometimes, therefore, that is the only way of doing things effectively. However, we should not be deceived into thinking that that is the real core of the matter. Therapy is a matter of soul and spirit and such mysteries are not amenable to mass production.

A related problem has been the emphasis on method, as though once one has the right technique it matters not who applies it. The attempt to produce a taxonomy of human problems each with a matching treatment, generally known as the medical model, simply does not accord with reality. The DSM is an fascinating work of fiction and a periodic check on where the story of American psychiatry has got to, but it is not a guide to treatment.

The factors that matter in psychotherapy are what are called the generic ones, like empathy, positive regard and non-judgementalism and these, if they are genuine, are essentially qualities of the person of the therapist, not features of  method technically applied. When a student counsellor comes to supervision and says, "I used empathy in this case"one knows immediately that they have missed the point.

All this, of course, throws up the difficulty of training. How is one to turn a person into a therapist? If there is any relationship between ability to pass examinations in counselling theory and ability to help souls in distress, it appears to be an inverse one. The real teacher is life itself. There is probably more to be learnt from good literature than from most psychology text books.

I hope that at Eleusis, while we will offer workshops and host training programmes, we shall be able to hang onto the basic spirit of education for its own sake, learning that springs from the need of the soul rather than the calculations of career planning or faith in mere technical expertise. In taking this stance one is standing against the current and defying the spirit of our times, but there is, I believe, a greater and less ephemeral spirit that demands no less of us.