Who we are
We are the leading professional association and a Professional Standards Authority Voluntary Accredited Register for the psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy profession in the UK.
We enjoy a reputation for high clinical and professional standards within the counselling and psychotherapy profession and, unlike the other similar organisations, we are purely psychoanalytic in our focus.
Our Member Institutions (MIs) are training organisations and professional associations that include some of the most distinguished bodies in the field with international reputations for the rigour of their intellectual thinking and training.
We accredit the trainings of our MIs, ensuring that they meet our exacting standards. Individuals who qualify from our accredited trainings are eligible to become BPC Registrants and appear on our public Register. Registrants must comply with our code of ethics and Continuing Professional Development requirements.
We are accredited by the Professional Standards Authority which means that our performance as a regulator is monitored on an annual basis. Each year, the BPC applies to the Professional Standards Authority for reaccreditation and to achieve reaccreditation, the BPC has to satisfactorily meet the PSA’s eight Standards for Accredited Registers. These Standards include 1) Eligibility and Public Interest, 2) Management of the Register, 3) Standards for Registrants, 4) Education and Training, 5) Complaints and Concerns about Registrants, 6) Governance, 7) Management of risks arising from the activities of the Registrants and 8) Communications and Engagement. For further information regarding these Standards, please click here . If the BPC does not meet these Standards, the BPC will not achieve reaccreditation and we will not be able to assert that we are a PSA Voluntary Accredited Register.
We also ‘kite mark’ several trainings that are psychoanalytic in their formulation but do not, on their own, enable practitioners to appear on our Register. Practitioners completing these trainings can appear on our public rosters. We currently kite mark Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT), Mentalisation Based Therapy (MBT) and Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP).
As well as our regulatory role, we advance the knowledge and understanding of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically informed therapies in a range of critical policymaking and opinion-forming arenas in the UK.
We also lead debate about the role of psychoanalytic theory and thinking outside of the consulting room. We engage with academia through our Scholars membership category and through events such as our annual ‘Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Now’ (PPNow) conference, and our termly magazine ‘New Associations‘ that is widely regarded as one of the smartest, liveliest publications in the psychotherapy world.
