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Editorial

INSIDE OUT continues to develop both through its growing list of subscribers and
 through direct sales to the public via 
bookshops and therapy and training centres.


In this, our third issue, we are responding to a
 need expressed to us by various subscribers. This 
involves reviewing the growth of training courses 
over the past few years. This is of interest both to 
would-be-trainees and to practicing therapists as they 
look at how the profession is developing in Ireland.
 We have therefore decided to bring together a listing
 of psychotherapy and counselling courses and we 
hope that this listing and the spotlighting of the
 various trainings will help fill the gap which exists at 
present.

The growth of courses also highlights the need 
for standardisation of training, a problem which is
 tackled by Jim O’Donoghue in his article in this
 issue. We expect that it may be some time before the 
profession of psychotherapy follows that of 
counselling in drawing up overall criteria for training
 irrespective of theoretical orientation. The work of
 the Irish Association for Counselling committee on 
training standards is now well advanced and we feel 
that similar questions should be addressed by 
psychotherapists. Such discussion will cross the 
divides of philosophy, theory and practice.

Susan Lindsay outlines her view of the theoretical
 context of humanistic psychotherapy and Ger 
Murphy looks at the need for supervision. We hope 
that both these articles will stimulate discussion of
 theory and practice across the divides in the 
profession.

Extra momentum for this process of discussion
 will be generated by the first Europe-wide
 Conference on Psychotherapy to be held in 
Amsterdam on December 15 1990. The holding of
 this conference reflects the growing need for co-
operation on standards within the profession in
 Ireland as Europe-wide standardisation comes nearer.
 We hope to report on this conference in our next
 issue.