The importance of methodology and method, sense and sensibility

A critical review of and response to ‘Psychotherapy in the UK: Multicultural, Eurocentric, and Americentric influences on a complex field in a troubled time’ by Colin Feltham

Abstract

This article is a critical review of and response to Colin Feltham’s article, ‘Psychotherapy in the UK: Multicultural, Eurocentric, and Americentric influences on a complex field in a troubled time’, also published in this issue. The article critiques the lack of method and/or underlying methodology in Feltham’s article, and, by contrast, offers a methodological basis for this critique of his article, which frames this response in terms of Feltham’s rhetoric (language), his references to tradition and to authority, and his lack of objectivity. In doing so, this article addresses and challenges Feltham’s use of unfounded generalisations and familiar tropes about multiculturalism, Anglo- and Americo-centrism, political correctness, wokeness, and all the other ills he attributes to ‘dominant leftist-progressive view[s]’ of psychotherapy and counselling in the United Kingdom—and, by implication, elsewhere. It also challenges what appears to be a certain obsession on Feltham’s part both with various forms and categories of Leftists, as well as with an idealised white indigenous Britishness.