A space for information and ideas about psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapies
The British Psychoanalytic Council has adopted a new complaints procedure which came into force on 16 April 2007 (revised 22 September 2008). This procedure applies to all registrants of the BPC, that is all those practitioners who appear in our annual register (and in the Finding a Therapist section of this website).
If you are a patient engaged in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, you have the right to expect your therapist to practise in a safe, effective and appropriate manner. Our job is to ensure that our registrants have the health and character, as well as the necessary skills and knowledge to do their job safely and effectively.
We and our member organisations ensure that high standards of proficiency, performance and ethical conduct are maintained by our registrants. Our over-riding concern is to protect the public and maintain public confidence in the profession we regulate.
All our registrants are governed by a number of fitness to practice requirements, which you can access here (all are pdf documents):
• Training Standards – all our registrants have trained under the standards set out in this document.
• Code of Ethics – this document sets out the ethical standards that govern all our registrants.
• Statement on confidentiality – because of the nature of psychoanalytic. psychotherapy, the BPC adopts particularly rigorous standards of confidentiality set out in this document.
• Continuous professional development policy – registrants must maintain an annual programme of continuing professional development, monitored and approved by the BPC, which includes consultation on their clinical work, attending lectures and courses and a broad range of professional activity.
Our registrants are also governed by the BPC’s Complaints Procedure. This is quite a detailed document and sets out very precisely the procedures that we adopt for handling a formal complaint. We will soon be publishing on this site a user friendly guide to the procedure.
However, if you have a grievance about a therapist who is a BPC registrant and are unsure whether you wish to make a complaint, do not hesitate to contact the BPC office to discuss the matter.
Alternatively, you may wish to contact WITNESS, an advocacy service independent of BPC, who may be able to assist you. WITNESS’s helpline number is 08454 500 300. Their website address is www.witnessagaintsabuse.org.uk. Other services that may be able to provide assistance are the Citizens Advice Bureau and Mind.
• Practitioners who have been removed from the British Psychoanalytic Council's register
• Sanctions imposed as the result of findings against BPC registrants