Psychotherapy and marketing

Psychotherapy, is not regulated by law in the United Kingdom.   It is subject only to the standards of behaviour that can reasonably be expected of anyone who provides a personal service. 
Many psychotherapists belong to professional, or trade, associations that claim to offer a more skilful and ethical service than that provided by non-members.   Members are accredited by fellow members on the basis of what they call ‘training' and in some cases ‘supervision’ by fellow members.    

Accreditation and ‘training’ 

Unlike aviation, architecture, construction engineering, medicine, plumbing and so on, the skills required by psychotherapists and the standards necessary for competent, scrupulous consultancy cannot be measured objectively.   The necessary skills can certainly be enhanced by attending courses, lectures, seminars, ‘workshops’ and so on, but any paper 'qualification' awarded is worthless as an indication of competence or probity.  
In reality, the only people truly qualified to assess the competence and integrity of their 'therapists are their clients.   
The value of accreditation by fellow professionals is impossible to assess.
 

Qualifications

Supervision

The word ‘supervision’ has several different meanings.    Mostly, it is used to describe an activity in which someone's work is examined by another person who accepts the ultimate responsibility for the quality of the finished work  to customers or clients .
In academic research, supervisors are consultants who help scholars organise their work, perhaps challenge some of their ideas and offer appropriate support.
Some psychotherapists make use of ‘self-supervision’, by which they mean that they reflect  on meetings they had with clients, try to appraise their own conduct critically and perhaps seek advice from a disinterested person.

Prospective clients have to decide, therefore, in what sense the word ‘supervision’ is used by the 'therapist they intend to consult.   

'We must not expect that the personal qualities of the psychotherapist will spring from formal instruction; the professional demands are much more far-reaching and among them there is something that most decisively cannot be taught.' Karl Jaspers⁽¹⁾

'A person is usually assumed to be competent because he or she has had a specific amount of academic training and supervised experience, although why this should ensure competence is not specified. Ignored are the subtle questions of what precisely it is that professionals are supposed to do, and how well they do it.    These two issues are more complex than is often realised and deserve further elaboration.' Daniel B. Hogan⁽²⁾

'... the prospective client should take nothing for granted where the qualifications of a therapist are concerned.   The most essential consideration is to be able to form a proper working relationship; all other factors should be examined in this light.' Joel Kovel⁽³⁾

'(Psychotherapy) ... is a craft the aptitude for which derives more from a general experience of living than is generally supposed.' Peter Lomas⁽⁴⁾

'(Training in psychotherapy) ... should start from the recognition that a learned technique not only cannot substitute for a more elemental capacity to heal, but may actually inhibit this capacity: that it should be less a course of instruction than an attempt to increase the individual's unique capacity to help.' Peter Lomas⁽⁵⁾

'Though (simplified models of human behaviour) may be of some use in marshalling the "facts" of mass behaviour, they are unlikely to deal effectively with the complexities of the individual case and it is small wonder that a reasonably intelligent and sensitive person is likely to make better guesses about others if he relies more on the skills he has spent his life developing than on the crudely insensitive conceptual equipment of traditional psychology.' David Smail⁽⁶⁾

'There are many schools of psychotherapy but results appear to depend on the personal qualities, experience and worldly wisdom of the therapist rather than on the theoretical basis of the method.' Robert M. Youngson (ed.)⁽⁷⁾