Amazon update

Amazon have blamed the removal of LGBTQ books on a 'glitch', and denied that LGBTQ books (and, it seems, books on disabled sexuality) were targeted. Here are two very good blog posts explaining why that doesn't make the problem go away: Mary Hodder on Techcrunch.com, and Keith Kamisugi's response and elaboration on EqualJusticeSociety.org. (Thanks to Oyceter for the link.)

In the meantime, now that you're all into the signing of petitions, please, please, please go here and sign the petition written by Christopher Bollas and Darian Leader on behalf of the Coalition against the Over-Regulation of Psychotherapy. The link will explain the background, but here's a brief quote from their home page:

The new proposals have shown a serious and bizarre misunderstanding of the nature of talking therapy. They see it as a definable technique to be applied with predictable outcomes. Yet the key to talking therapies is the nature of the relationship between the parties rather than the performance of any particular procedure. Analytic work involves an open-ended relationship, where results may emerge that were never predicted or even thought of beforehand. The proposed regulation leaves no room for the unknown, as if the solution to each person's problems were known in advance: therapist and patient will be expected to adhere to a clear predetermined agenda. Government intervention thus threatens the very foundation of analytic work, compromising both its creativity and authenticity.

The new regulations proposed for the talking therapies - which include 451 rules for the analytic session - would effectively make it impossible to practice psychoanalysis and many other forms of therapy in the way they have been practiced for the last hundred years.

I can't even begin to tell you how important I think it is that talking therapies be available to people, and that CBT not become the only government-funded (or legally practicable) form of therapy. This article by Darian Leader goes some way to explaining why.