I FIND it interesting that, if you leave a gap of one letter, "therapist" changes into "the rapist".

The accusation against unqualified and unscrupulous therapists and counsellors is more than justified.

In more than 30 years as a parish priest I have had to pick up the personal pieces in cases where people have been psychologically - and sometimes physically - damaged by the very people who were supposed to be caring for them.

Of course there are incompetent and wicked priests too; and there are some conscientious and wise secular psychotherapists and counsellors. It's the self-interested charlatans I'm after - the ones who are in the therapy business because they like the status and the easy money.

Half a century ago, psychotherapists were as thin on the ground as daffodils in November but, particularly these last 20 years or so, they have multiplied to become as the sands of the sea. This is partly because there are so many courses advertised which promise to train anyone as a psychotherapist. This is criminal false pretences.

Psychological and spiritual counselling is a skill of a very high order and the consequences when it goes wrong are sometimes irreparable. Not everybody is cut out to be a psychotherapist as not everybody has it in them to become a concert pianist or a steeplejack. But, as I discovered when I answered an advertisement not long ago, you can take a correspondence course after which there's nothing to stop you setting yourself up in the therapy industry.

The other question about all this is: "Why is so much therapy thought to be required?" There is a long tradition in the English character and way of life of courage under personal difficulties, stoicism and the stiff upper lip. And friends and relatives were there to help. But now we have been taught to parade our emotional problems in public and to "let it all hang out".

It's not good for us. A counsellor is referred to in the spooky jargon as "a professional friend". But the whole thing about your friend is that he's an amateur. The professional friend is a contradiction in terms.

Anyhow, the whole idea that "letting it all hang out" is good for you is suspect. It derives from Freud (1856-1939) and, as a form of psychotherapy, it's well past its sell-by date. The self-exposure of our deepest personal secrets is usually a phoney and ultimately destructive process sanctioned by the misuse of such words as "repression" and "subconscious". There is much to be said for bearing our burdens quietly with patience and courage: not least because to do so strengthens our character.

The counselling industry throws up its own absurdities.

For instance, when a party of journalists went across to Normandy to cover the anniversary of the D-Day landings, they were offered counselling. But the soldiers who stormed the beaches back in 1944 were never offered counselling. And then there was the man who said to his psychiatrist friend: "Pity you, having to sit there all day and listen to self-obsessed clients talking themselves blue in the face."

The psychiatrist shrugged and answered, "Who listens?"

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange