November 2006
3rd AGM of the College
Substantial changes were approved in the way in which The College operates.
The criteria and application procedures for membership that applied prior to the above changes were based on grandparenting provisions which came into effect when The College was founded three years ago. It has long been recognised that these procedures are not entirely satisfactory because, in effect, they limit membership of The College solely to those practitioners who are currently eligible for registration with UKCP (AP-PP Section) and BPC. This is because The College has, until now, had no formalised membership criteria and application procedures of its own. It is important that, as a professional organisation, The College should have in place its own membership criteria and application procedures. This has now been achieved with the introduction of the above changes.
The College remains committed to the principles on which it was founded: as a professional body for psychoanalytic practitioners from all schools of psychoanalysis in the UK, as well as being a learned society for the discipline of psychoanalysis. The College is not, therefore, a regulatory body. As a professional body, The College has no interest in the regulation of practitioners. A number of regulatory bodies already exists. However, such bodies are constitutionally unable to further the interests of practitioners and the various modalities of psychological therapy espoused by them. Some of them, while registering practitioners, do not even, currently, permit membership by individual practitioners.
The College differs radically from such a regulatory model. It is a genuine professional body whose principal objective is to look after the interests of its members and to further the discipline of psychoanalysis in all its diverse forms. In this respect, The College is unique and, arguably, the only pluralistic professional (as opposed to regulatory or training) body for psychoanalysis in the UK.
Despite the above objectives, The College accepts that it would be unethical, as a professional body, to ignore the interests of members of the public in relation to its practitioner-members. This principle has so far been recognised in a vicarious manner, through the grandparenting provisions that have required all members to retain their membership of other organisations belonging to UKCP or BPC: so that they might be subject to the codes of ethics and complaints procedures of those organisations.