I asked Cruse, the bereavement charity if they would write a foreword for my book.

I received this in reply from the editor of their journal. You can see why I retired from being a therapist.

I’m sorry to disappoint you – we don’t provide forewords for books unless we are directly involved in their writing. It’s a decision we have had to take as we receive so many requests, which is gratifying but hard to meet within our scant resources. Perhaps more fundamentally, putting our name to a book implies endorsement, which necessitates having to agree standards of what we might, or might not, regard as an acceptable standard of description of personal grief. This we consider completely inappropriate.

Why On earth would it possibly mean that?

I don't suppose it is intended, which just shows insensitivity. What you have written is foolish and offensive. So much of the professional response to people's grief is belittling. My Cruse counsellor was very good, but the administration of my case in the first place was mediocre at best. I have not written about that. Perhaps I will. As retired director of a school of psychotherapy and also once an NHS Aids Co-ordinator, I don't need to let this kind of pomposity bother me. But I never saw anything so pompous, so self important.

What incredible arrogance to write that you might ever be able to decide an "acceptable standard of description of personal grief."

You are a charity offering volunteer amateur counselling not a Government Department.

The procrustean bed that has been made for counselling by modern bureaucracy seems to have infected even the volunteer level. A little humility might come in useful.

As if anyone could possibly have an acceptable standard of description of personal grief. Acceptable to whom? God. As my dead wife Gill would have said, this is "barking mad."

Grief, and how people choose to describe it, is indeed very personal, as is how individuals respond to accounts of bereavement and grief, and not something on which we want to pronounce judgement.

You already did.

We are always delighted and grateful if someone wishes to include our contact details in their book, and we would be pleased if you wanted to do so.

I’m afraid the journal also took an editorial decision not to publish personal accounts of bereavement. So many are published and we just don’t have room in the journal, as we publish only 3 times a year. Again, it doesn’t feel right to be pronouncing critical judgement from an academic viewpoint on personal accounts.

I wonder what kind of critical judgement from an academic viewpoint you would have made on some of Kubler Ross's work.