This paper responds to the BJP editor's call for responses to the journal's symposium on statutory registration by offering a critical analysis of two previously neglected aspects of professionalization: the rapid ‘postgraduatization’ of psychotherapy, and the legitimacy or otherwise of the way in which state regulation is being pursued. The paper concludes by posing three key questions which any coherent case in favour of regulation must explicitly address, and by highlighting the inappropriateness of a hierarchical, ‘old paradigm’ model of institutional regulation for a psychotherapy field which is increasingly embracing the worldview of postmodernity.