A manifesto for psychotherapy
(By Keith Tudor and Pete Sanders Taken from their chapter in This is Madness Too, edited by Newnes, Holmes and Dunn )

In the spirit of reflexive, political psychology (and psychopolitics), and by way of presenting an open-ended conclusion which invites both reflection and action, we offer a new manifesto for psychotherapy:

1. Psychotherapists are therapists that serve the people.
2. Psychotherapists are concerned with change, not adjustment, and are explicit about their values and are intentional - socially and culturally.
3. Psychotherapists base their practice on a thorough and critical understanding of psychiatry and psychotherapy in context.
4. Psychotherapists strive to facilitate the reclaiming by clients of personal power in therapeutic relationships characterised by collaborative power.
5. Psychotherapists' practice reflects the awareness that the struggle for mental health involves changing society.
6. Psychotherapists organise and challenge oppressive institutions, especially psychiatric hegemony in the organisation of mental health services, professional monopoly on the control of service provision and direction, and the colonisation of the voluntary sector in mental health.
7. Psychotherapists support the user movement in general and, in particular, service user involvement in mental health service development and service user-controlled alternatives to psychiatric services.
8. Psychotherapists, in their work, account for social inequalities.
9. Psychotherapists are open to alternatives (e.g. as regards 'treatment') and seek to build alliances which emphasise user/survivor perspectives (on, amongst other issues, hearing voices and survivor controlled alternatives), and encourage and promote greater public access to information through new technology as challenging the knowledge-based power of professionals.
10. Psychotherapists maintain their independence and integrity by recognising that they are still in a process of learning about human psychology, culture and social systems and, therefore, that we need to be open to new approaches to clinical work, training and learning as well as organisation.

This manifesto describes an attitude to therapy which is both political and personal. It is not unique to or the property of any one approach to or school of therapy - although, from our experience and perspective, it is deeply influenced by humanistic psychology and radical psychiatry and is deeply embedded in the person-centred approach. Some approaches and certainly some practitioners are more radical than others; it is for us to continue the struggle.