Letters to the Editor

The British Confederation of Psychotherapists

We thought the readers of your Journal would be interested in receiving a brief report concerning the formation of The British Confederation of Psychotherapists, and an up-date of subsequent developments.

In January 1992, ten long-standing psychoanalytically-oriented organisations met informally to consider the developments taking place in the United Kingdom Standing Conference for Psychotherapy (now the UK Council for Psychotherapy). They were concerned that the diversity of standards and trainings, and the size of the Analytical Psychotherapy Section (now renamed the Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Section), with its thirty-two organisations, posed insuperable problems to the establishment of appropriately rigorous standards for trainings at all levels.

As a result of this meeting, a Working Party was set up to make proposals for a new organisation that would adequately define and protect the training and practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and on 8 March The British Confederation of Psychotherapists was formed. It has now been agreed that the character of the BCP is best represented by the following addition to the title: Psycho-Analysts, Analytical Psychologists, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists and Child Psychotherapists. Together these disciplines comprise the field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The member organisations of the BCP recognise that there are other forms of psychotherapy, but consider they are competent to set standards only in relation to the training and practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

The main aim of this organisation is to form a register of psychotherapists who have trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and who belong to an organisation whose standards of training and code of ethics are sufficiently rigorous to have been approved by the BCP's Registration and Ethics Committee.

The BCP has now completed its main documents. The constitution is currently being vetted by