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So far, all attempts to regulate have been voluntary. A major breakthrough was the formation of The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) as an umbrella-organisation of training-bodies for all mainstream modalities of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. UKCP administers a voluntary register of psychotherapists trained by all member-organisations of UKCP. Registration is via member-organisations which are grouped together within Sections, according to their modality of working. The Analytical Psychology - Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Section (AP-PP Section) of UKCP is concerned with practitioners who are psychoanalytic in their orientation.

Some training-organisations from the AP-PP Section withdrew from UKCP and formed a splinter-group: The British Confederation of Psychotherapists (BCP) which has since changed its name to The British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC). That organisation administers a similar voluntary register of psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

Early in 2009 the Council of Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis (CPJA) was launched to replace the AP-PP Section as a much more loosely affiliated component of UKCP. The principal difference is that, whereas membership of the AP-PP Section comprised, as with UKCP, only the relevant member-organisations from that particular modality, membership of CPJA will be open to individual practitioners who are either registered with or who are eligible for registration with UKCP and who have trained with one of the member-organisations of the AP-PP Section.

Over the last few years, there have been moves for psychoanalytic practitioners, as well as psychotherapists, counsellors and psychologists, to be regulated pursuant to statute. Under those plans, regulation would have remained in the hands of the professions themselves, though fully backed by statutory powers. The present government was unwilling to sanction this form of regulation. Instead, the Department of Health has decreed that practitioners from the professions for the talking therapies should be treated as health professionals, whether practising in the NHS or privately, and has directed that regulation shall be by a regulatory agency of the state, viz the Health Professions Council (HPC). Such a form of regulation would override the present regulatory functions of UKCP and BPC, as well as the other voluntary regulatory bodies for the other categories of practitioner referred to above. Regulation of each profession would, as a result, be removed from the professions concerned and all regulatory power would be transferred instead to public servants who are unfamiliar with the nature of the clinical work carried out by, in particular, psychoanalytic practitioners.

Regulation by HPC has not yet come about but remains the government's objective, for implementation by the end of the decade. The College has been closely involved in the process towards regulation by the state and has contributed a constructive but, whenever necessary, critical voice to the discussions that have taken and will continue to take place. Details of the position of The College in regard to these issues are set out more fully in the Latest News section of this website, where there is a wealth of information about the topic of regulation and about other issues relevant to psychoanalysis and to psychoanalytic practitioners.