The Psychotherapy Register

UKSCP was inaugurated in January 1989 as a sequel to the ‘Rugby’ Psychotherapy Conference, itself a sequel to the Sieghart Committee. In 1990 UKSCP resolved to establish psychotherapy as a separate profession and to seek to establish itself as the competent authority in relation to E.C. regulations, present and impending, which regulate the freedom of movement of professional people in the E.C. The key to being a competent authority lies mainly in holding a register for the profession.

With increasing interest in the sequence and process of moving towards the formation of a psychotherapy register, I thought it might be helpful to spell out the process that will be taking place over the next few months.

Draft proposals for entry requirements and curriculum content were circulated earlier this year to all our Member Organisations for critical comment. At a Special General Meeting, held on 12 October 1991, we reached agreement on two critical issues. The first, that psychotherapy should be a post-graduate profession so that we fit into the first draft directive of the E.C. which concerns what are called ‘liberal and social professions’. The second, that psychotherapy training requires analysis and self-exploration for the benefit of the client as well as the practitioner. This means that people who wish to train in psychotherapy must have a qualification which is of degree level, although it need not necessarily be academic, and that they must undertake a personal analytical or self-examination procedure, appropriate to the kind of psychotherapy that they will be training for. We have not yet agreed on the outlines of the curriculum contents that will be required for trainings, but there is broad agreement in the written responses to our original proposals, so that it will not be difficult to formulate acceptable standards for curriculum content.

We are now in a position to decide upon the functions and therefore, the structure of the Registration Committee and we will be