Our History

The Forum for Independent Psychotherapists came into being in early 1997 to meet the need for a non‐aligned, pluralistic, psychoanalytic organisation. FIP attracted many therapists who were uncomfortable with the policy of other psychoanalytic organisations which did not permit dual membership of the UKCP and the BPC.  FiP was, and still is, an organisation to which people come to grow from their ‘parental’ training organisation.  

FiP continues to be analytic in its thinking and to be an organisation that supports its members and encourages development and reflection in a socially aware and analytic manner.

In the early years, because of the diverse theoretical and practising backgrounds of members of the FIP Executive, there was a good understanding of some of the politics, personalities and issues involved in the organisational world of psychotherapy at a time when the UKCP, BPC and various UK governments were in a considerable state of flux over their involvement and issues to do with recognition.  A number of the original members of FiP took an active role in the development of UKCP and in those formative years FIP was an active supporter and ‘critical friend’ of the UKCP. Those members also worked to ensure the autonomy and critical thinking of FiP. Subsequently, though not in recent years, there have been FiP members elected on to the UKCP Executive in various influential positions.

FiP was not established as, and does not seek to be, a training organisation and new membership continues to be drawn primarily from graduates of UKCP accredited trainings seeking organisational membership in accordance with UKCP’s stated preference that members register via an organisational member rather than directly.

FiP is also an established accrediting member of UKCP and offers accreditation to individual adult analytic and psychodynamic therapist practice labels within the CPJA college of UKCP. FiP operates carefully designed policies and procedures aligned to UKCP/CPJA Standards of Education and Training (SETs) to enable the accreditation and subsequent registration of suitably trained and experienced practitioners who have not qualified via a UKCP accredited training.