Volume 17, Number 2, 2025

EN:

Although the word psychotherapy, from the Greek (psyche + terapia) meaning soul healing, has multi-disciplinary roots, some of which date back to ancient Egyptian times, contemporary psychotherapy is predominantly aligned with health and healthcare. In response, the first part of the article interrogates the ideal of health and cure promoted by theories of psychotherapy; criticises the lack of critical practice regarding diagnosis; advocates a two continua approach to both sickness and health in psychotherapy; and argues that psychotherapy both is and is not a health practice. The second part of the article takes up the issue of the identity of psychotherapists and, by means of a review of different definitions of psychotherapy and of the more critical and radical traditions within the discipline and practice, argues that psychotherapists both are and are not health practitioners. The third and final part of the article offers a critical case study of the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists’ application for the state registration of its practitioners; and argues that such regulation and registration compromises the profession of psychotherapy, and thus that psychotherapy both is and is not a health profession.

EN:

Aotearoa New Zealand has a high rate of imprisonment, seventh or eighth among 36 OECD countries. The experience of imprisonment, isolation from family and the wider community, the company of a population where violence, misogyny, drugs, risk-taking and rule-breaking are normalised, sees the emergence and practice of a criminal subjectivity. This confers mana, a loyal peer group, mentors and a career, on a population well-endowed with obstacles to these ends.An intoxicating, adaptive, performative subjectivity emerges, is practiced every day, and is not readily given up, accounting for the failure of manualised rehabilitation and treatment models which locate the problem in the individual subject. The prison, a subjectifying machine that perpetuates drug use, violence, poverty, family harm and disenfranchisement, which reduces participation in the wider democracy, mitigates against individual change. Using the philosophy of Michel Foucault, in this paper the authors reflect on method in working with men with extensive prison experience, without relying on the idea of an agentive self – an unlikely fiction among graduates from the prison system.

EN:

Access to mental health care remains a pressing global issue. In response, policymakers have devised strategies that span from self-care to psychotherapy, hoping to ease the strain. However, reforms over the past two decades have significantly restricted access to psychotherapy, limiting the number of professionals, such as nurses, allowed to practise under stringent conditions. This article examines the effects of Quebec’s public policies on the practice of psychotherapy and mental health interventions. A critical discourse analysis, grounded in Strauss’s theory of negotiated order, was conducted on 48 policy documents and public discourses. The findings reveal that mental health interventions have become disconnected from their therapeutic essence, reduced instead to technical tasks. This shift perpetuates a hierarchical professional landscape, subordinating these practices despite their reliance on the relational dynamics that define effective mental health care. For the nursing profession, the implications are profound. The profession’s contribution to providing timely access to community-based mental health services is being overlooked, stymied by outdated perceptions and policy restrictions.

EN:

This work offers a critical examination of research which investigates the reasons behind diagnostic delays among women, to recognize that the phenomenon has been insufficiently understood and poorly theorized. We then call for a deeper understanding of women’s embodied lived experience of diagnostic delays, as well as of the social and political contexts that are shaping and reproducing these delays. To address this task, we end by describing and proposing the theoretical engagement of critical phenomenology, for its capacity to consider the full complexity of this wicked and enduring problem.