On integrity

This paper argues that, rather than statutory registration, it is the personal integrity of the individual practitioner that will best safeguard the interest of the client and ultimately the image and reputation of the counselling/psychotherapy profession within society. An attempt is made to define integrity as an absolute moral component of the personality and to consider its significance to the therapeutic relationship. Trust, too, is considered as a vital factor in this relationship. As well as the integrity of the individual practitioner, the integrity of the psychotherapy profession as a whole is considered with particular regard to its considerable reliance on the production of theory for its sense of self worth, as opposed to its efficacy as a therapeutic enterprise.