ABSTRACT
Much CAM activity takes place in the private sector and, because training routes into practice are so diverse, it would be hard to map even the numbers of practitioners working across CAM with any certainty. Formal regulation depends on both a critical mass of potential registrants and a delineated occupational sector, and it is hard to assess whether the numbers of practitioners practising more esoteric therapies fulfil these requirements. Whilst practitioners who choose to become politically affiliated with a professional organisation are more visible and quantifiable, an unknown number of therapists may reject formal mechanisms altogether. If CAM therapists of the 1970s and 1980s were driven by a strong anti-establishment leaning, today’s newly qualified practitioners are as likely to be politically disinterested, or are merely trying to generate a living in an economic downturn. Anti-regulation therapists have long articulated fears that their therapeutic skill set could be constrained, altered or ‘cherry picked’ by other professions if they were to become more professionally visible (Saks 2002). It is fair to argue that statutory regulation does, in some ways, codify the nature of a therapeutic discipline and may attempt to identify a scope of practice, which itself may be anathema to practitioners who pride themselves as working in an intuitive, personalised way.
