Scope

The criterion is the act, never the title

We long hesitated over the word. "Perimeter" spoke of a frontier, a line one draws and guards. What CARPEA marks out is not a territory to defend: it is a scope entered through what one does, and left the moment the act changes in nature. Here is how we describe it.

The sector's labels are created every year, overlap and contradict one another from one school to the next. Most have no legal standing. To try to map this scope by titles would be to draw a map from shop signs, ignoring what goes on behind the door. We have taken the opposite view: what situates a practice is not the name the professional gives themselves, it is the gesture they make before the person in front of them.

From this choice follows a simple rule, almost self-evident once stated. One and the same person may fall under several places in this scope depending on what they are doing at a given moment, and the title printed on their business card decides nothing. It is the act that speaks.

Five features, together

Falling within CARPEA's scope is any professional practice that brings all five together. It takes only one to be missing for us to be elsewhere.

An instituted relationshipBetween a professional and a person, or a group, who has asked for that relationship. No one is accompanied without their knowledge.
Work that only the person themselves can doThe professional creates the conditions, sheds light, supports, sets in motion. They do not do it in the person's place, otherwise it is a service, not accompaniment.
A frame that is setAn object, limits, a duration, confidentiality, material conditions. The frame is not a formality: it is what makes the relationship legible and protective for both parties.
An aim of development, autonomy or transformationAnd not the cure of an identified pathology. The distinction is decisive, for it is what separates accompaniment from care.
No reserved actNo clinical diagnosis, no prescription, no treatment of an established disorder, no act that the law reserves for a healthcare profession. Where regulated care begins, our scope stops.

These five features reward no diploma and exclude none. They describe a way of working. This is why they can be found in a practitioner who has attended no recognised school, and can be absent in a master's holder who, on that day, is doing something else entirely.

Four circles, from development to transmission

Once inside the scope, one still has to locate oneself. We arrange acts into four circles, not to rank the dignity of practices, but to match the requirement to the depth at which each gesture touches the person.

Vigilance grows from the first circle to the third, as accompaniment draws closer to the psychic life and the body. The fourth circle is of another nature: it brings together those who accompany the practitioners themselves. A coach conducting work on deep emotions falls within the second circle for as long as they do it; a psychopractitioner running a supervision falls within the fourth for as long as they run it. The circles qualify acts, never people.

Circle 1

Development of the person

Coaching and mentoring: work on goals, the project and autonomy, through dialogue and method.

Standard vigilance

Circle 2

Affect, body and altered states

Practices that deliberately draw on emotion, the body, the imagination or altered states of consciousness.

Heightened vigilance

Circle 3

Non-medical relational psychotherapy

Psychic accompaniment outside the medical field, within established theoretical frameworks, over time.

Maximum vigilance

Circle 4

Accompaniment of practitioners

Supervising, transmitting and analysing the practice of other practitioners: the top of the competence chain.

Cascading responsibility

See the detail of the four circles and the professions they cover →

What this scope is not

To describe a scope is also to trace its edges. We deliberately leave aside the accompaniment professions already instituted, which have a framework and recognition: teaching and training, employment and career support, social work, organisational development. CARPEA addresses the relational professions which, by contrast, have nothing, much as SNPPsy or FF2P built something for psychotherapy.

Then there are the firm limits: the healthcare professions in their proper exercise, the acts the law reserves, and the practices that promise an effect they can never account for. These edges are not negotiable, and we set them out in detail.

What lies outside the scope, and why →

A scope, not a tribunal. Situating a practice within this scope says nothing about the worth of its foundations or the proof of its effectiveness. CARPEA settles no scientific controversy by vote. It requires a frame, supervision, a code of ethics and honesty about what the practice allows, and it organises the examination of these questions rather than pretending to have resolved them.

Scope · The four circles

Four circles for situating an act

The circles do not rank practitioners by merit. They answer a question of caution: how far does this gesture involve the person, and what requirement does that place on the one who makes it? The closer accompaniment comes to the intimate, the sounder the frame must be.

One and the same professional may move from one circle to another over a single week, sometimes over a single session. What changes is not their identity, it is what they do. The lists that follow name methods recognised by the field's federations, FF2P and EAP foremost among them, and not titles protected or guaranteed by CARPEA.

Circle 1, Development of the person

The widest circle, the one where one works through dialogue and method, without drawing on any altered state or deep psychic material. Here one helps someone clarify a project, remove an obstacle, decide. The vigilance is the standard one of any instituted professional relationship.

Coaching, in all its forms Professional coach · executive coach · team coach · organisation coach · agile coach · transition coach · life coach · academic coach · parenting coach · mental performance coach. Mentoring Mentor · entrepreneur mentor.

The act takes precedence over the field. Whatever its ground, coaching falls within this circle as long as it works through dialogue. As soon as it deliberately summons emotion or the body, it tips into the second.

Circle 2, Affect, body and altered states

Here the practitioner deliberately draws on emotion, the body, the imagination or altered states of consciousness. The lever is more powerful, and so more delicate, and vigilance is strengthened accordingly. These methods have their place in the scope when practised within a non-therapeutic frame; conducted in depth and over time, they fall within the third circle.

Altered states and suggestive work Ericksonian hypnosis practitioner · hypnotherapist · sophrologist · Vittoz method practitioner · NLP practitioner. Expressive and body-based approaches Art therapist · psychodrama practitioner · body-based approach practitioner · relaxation and mindfulness practitioner.

Circle 3, Non-medical relational psychotherapy

The circle where psychic accompaniment is conducted outside the medical field, within established theoretical frameworks and over time. Vigilance here is at its maximum, for this is where the boundary with care is finest and the responsibility towards the person heaviest.

Analytic field Psychoanalyst · analytic psychotherapist. Humanistic and existential field Gestalt therapist · person-centred approach practitioner · transactional analyst · logotherapist · psychosynthesis practitioner · transpersonal approach practitioner · sophia-analyst. Body-based field Bioenergetic analyst · psycho-organic analysis practitioner · body-based psychotherapist · relational psychosomatics practitioner. Systemic and integrative field Family and couple therapist · systemic practitioner · brief-therapy practitioner (Palo Alto) · integrative psychopractitioner · multi-reference psychopractitioner · CBT practitioner. Specific forms of accompaniment Sex therapist (outside medical sexology) · bereavement practitioner · parenting practitioner.

The use of the protected titles of psychologist and psychotherapist remains subject to legal conditions, which we set out on the page "What lies outside the scope".

Circle 4, Accompaniment of practitioners

The top of the competence chain. Here one supervises, transmits and analyses the practice of other practitioners.

Practitioner supervisor · training analyst · professional practice analyst (APP) · professional co-development facilitator · Balint group facilitator.

A cascading responsibility. What is transmitted badly here reverberates on people the supervisor will never meet. One reaches this circle only after long testing one's own practice.

A reservation, stated from the outset. Belonging to this map says nothing about the validity of a practice's foundations or the proof of its effectiveness, for the state of knowledge varies greatly from one approach to another. CARPEA settles no controversy by deliberation: it requires a frame, supervision, a code of ethics and honesty about what the practice allows. It does, however, rule out without discussion the practices founded on energetic, magnetic, occult or predictive claims, and those whose invoked mechanisms are contradicted by the state of knowledge: energy healing, magnetism, reiki, biological decoding, kinesiology, constellations and related practices have no place in the scope.

Scope · What lies outside

Where the scope stops, and why

A scope without edges means nothing. Some practices are excluded because the law reserves them, others because they belong to another already-organised profession, others still because they promise an effect they can never account for. These three edges are not of the same nature, and they must be distinguished.

Outside the scope, without exception

The first limit is that of regulated care. The healthcare professions, in their proper exercise, do not fall under accompaniment as we understand it, and neither do the acts the law reserves for them.

The regulated healthcare professions, in their proper exercise

Doctor, psychiatrist, child psychiatrist, occupational physician; psychologist and clinical psychologist; nurse; psychomotor therapist; occupational therapist; speech and language therapist; midwife; physiotherapist; dietitian.

The reserved acts

Clinical diagnosis, which identifies a medical, psychiatric or psychopathological disorder. Prescription. Treatment of an established pathology. Psychological assessment by reserved tests. Any act constituting the illegal practice of medicine.

What is not accompaniment

Advice that decides in the person's place. The service in which the professional produces the result. The sale of products presented as therapeutic. Fortune-telling and predictive practices. Practices with an energetic, magnetic or occult aim. Any practice that makes its effectiveness conditional on adherence to a belief system.

The accompaniment professions already instituted

Teaching and vocational training; employment and career support, from career guidance to skills assessment and the accreditation of prior experience (VAE); social work; organisational development, from facilitation to change management. These professions accompany, but already have a framework, a diploma or recognition. CARPEA does not address them.

A doctor, a psychiatrist or a psychologist may also carry out an accompaniment activity in the sense of this document: a psychiatrist who supervises, a psychologist who coaches. It is then that activity, and that alone, that falls within the scope, with a particularly strict duty of transparency about the role being exercised.

Titles, under French law

The second limit rests on the law. Only two titles are protected by law in our immediate neighbourhood, and no member of CARPEA may use them without meeting their conditions.

Protected by law

Psychologist, a title protected since 1985, reserved for holders of a master's-level degree in psychology meeting the conditions set by decree. Its usurpation is punishable under criminal law.

Psychotherapist, a protected title whose use requires registration on the national register of psychotherapists held by the regional health agencies, conditional on training in clinical psychopathology of at least 400 hours and a practical placement.

CARPEA makes this a verifiable condition of membership and a ground for removal. It is a legal obligation, not a requirement we invent.

Not protected

Psychoanalyst, psychopractitioner, gestalt therapist, family therapist, transactional analyst, coach, mentor, supervisor, hypnotherapist, sophrologist, art therapist, NLP practitioner, and the vast majority of the sector's labels. They are regulated, where they are at all, by private associations and federations whose standards vary considerably.

It is this void that justifies CARPEA. Where the State protects a title, there is nothing to add. Where it protects nothing, someone must produce legibility, or no one will.

What CARPEA will not do

Seek the protection of new titles. Grant a right to practise. Stand in for a public authority. It produces professional legibility where the law has chosen not to intervene, and stops where the law begins.