At the moment there is no statutory registration of psychotherapists, although one is planned. This means that currently it is possible for anyone to say they are a psychotherapist. However there are registers of accredited psychotherapists, such as the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, the British Psychoanalytic Council, and British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies . If your potential therapist is registered with one of these, they will have completed a training, have malpractice insurance and a robust complaints procedure.

Try to find out as much about your potential psychotherapist’s training and experience as you can before you go and see them. Any psychotherapist who does not want to tell you what their training has been is worthy of suspicion, in our view.

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There are generally considered to be three main theoretical orientations within the field of psychotherapy:-

1.    Psychoanalytic
2.    Cognitive-behavioural
3.    Systemic

Some people would also add:-

4.  Integrative

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