British Psychological Society

History

It was founded on 24 October 1901 at University College London (UCL) as The Psychological Society, the organisation initially admitted only recognised teachers in the field of psychology. The ten founder members were:

Its current name of The British Psychological Society was taken in 1906 to avoid confusion with another group named The Psychological Society. Under the guidance of Charles Myers, membership was opened up to members of the medical profession in 1919. In 1941 the society was incorporated. In 1965 it was a granted a Royal charter.

Organisation

The Society is both a learned and a professional body. As such it provides support and advice on research and practice issues. It is also a Registered Charity which imposes certain constraints on what it can and cannot do. For example, it cannot campaign on issues which are seen as party political. The BPS is not the statutory regulation body for Practitioner Psychologists in the UK which is the Health and Care Professions Council.

The Society has a large number of specialist and regional branches throughout the United Kingdom. It holds its Annual Conference, usually in May, in a different town or city each year. In addition, each of the sub-sections hold their own conferences and there is also a range of specialist meetings convened to consider relevant issues.

The Society is also a publishing body publishing a range of specialist journals, books and reports.

Membership grades and post-nominals

In 2019 the BPS had 60,604 members and subscribers, in all fields of psychology, 20,243 of whom were Chartered Members. There are a number of grades of members:

Members

Student member (no post-nominal): The grade for students of psychology.

Graduate Member (GMBPsS): Awarded to graduates of an undergraduate degree accredited by the society, or have completed an accredited conversion course.

Full Member (FMBPsS): awarded to those with qualification in psychology and working in the field of psychology

Associate Member (AMBPsS): awarded to wellbeing practitioners

Fellows

Associate Fellow (AFBPsS): Associate Fellowship may be awarded to nominees who have satisfied one of the following conditions since first becoming eligible for graduate membership:

i) achieved eligibility for full membership of one of the society's divisions and been successfully engaged in the professional application of a specialised knowledge of psychology for an aggregate of at least two calendar years full-time (or its part-time equivalent); or

ii) possess a research qualification in psychology and been engaged in the application, discovery, development or dissemination of psychological knowledge or practice for an aggregate of at least four years full time (or its part time equivalent); or

iii) published psychological works or exercised specialised psychological knowledge of a standard not less than in 1 or 2 above.

Fellow (FBPsS): Fellowship may be awarded to nominees who have made an outstanding contribution to psychology (see Category:Fellows of the British Psychological Society) by satisfying the following criteria:

Professional qualifications

CPsychol: Chartered Psychologist - Following the receipt of a royal charter in 1965, the society became the keeper of the Register of Chartered Psychologists. The register was the means by which the Society could regulate the professional practice of psychology. Regulation included the awarding of practising certificates and the conduct of disciplinary proceedings. The register ceased to be when statutory regulation of psychologists began on 1 July 2009. The profession is now regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council. A member of the British Psychological Society (MBPsS) who has achieved chartered status has the right to the letters "CPsychol" after his or her name.

CSci: Chartered Scientist - The Society is licensed by the Science Council for the registration of Chartered Scientists.

EuroPsy: European Psychologist - The Society is a member of the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations (EFPA), and can award this designation to Chartered Psychologists.

Response to the Cass Review

The Cass Review was published in April 2024, as an independent review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People, having been commissioned in 2020 by NHS England and NHS Improvement. It found, regarding medical interventions, a "lack of high-quality evidence", and it made a large number of recommendations, including those in the psychological area relevant to the BPS, including social transition, and conflicting clinical views between 'affirming care' versus 'exploratory care'.

In June 2024 the BPS issued an update to their "Guidelines for Psychologists Working with Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity". An open letter criticising the BPS for not referring to the Cass Review in these guidelines was sent on 14 August to Professor Tony Lavender, Chair of the BPS Practice Board, by Pat Harvey, David Pilgrim and Peter Harvey, all BPS members and clinical psychologists. They state that the revised BPS guidelines: "represent an active barrier to much needed change in philosophy and practice for psychologists working in re-formed Gender Services in the immediate future".

However, the BPS has clarified that its updated guidelines did not refer to the Cass Review because these relate to adults, not children and young people. The BPS made this point on its website:

The purpose of this interim review was to assess the content in the guidance and update where necessary and appropriate. We know that the area of U18s and gender incongruence is a challenging and often highly politically charged one, which is why we have begun recruitment for the Task and Finish Group. We estimate this work will take approximately 18 months.

Honorary members and fellows

Honorary members

The following persons have been honorary members of the society:

1904 John Hughlings Jackson

1905 Harald Høffding, Sir Francis Galton, William James, Georg Elias Müller, Théodule Armand Ribot, Carl Stumpf

1910 James Sully

1911 Oswald Külpe

1912 Franz Brentano, James Ward

1926 Edward Claparède, Sigmund Freud, Gerardus Heymans, Pierre Janet, Henri Piéron, Edward Lee Thorndike, Edward Bradford Titchener, Hendrik Zwaardemaker

1927 Baron Albert Eduard Michotte van den Berck

1928 Mary Whiton Calkins

1932 James Rowland Angell, James McKeen Cattell, Sante de Sanctis, William Stern

1934 Havelock Ellis, Ernest Jones, Felix Krueger, William McDougall, Conwy Lloyd Morgan, Charles Samuel Myers, Alexander Faulkner Shand, Charles Edward Spearman, George Frederick William Stout

1937 Samuel Alexander, Henry Head, Charles Scott Sherrington

1940 Georges Dumas, Beatrice Edgell, Kurt Koffka, Carl Emil Seashore

In 1946 all surviving honorary members were made honorary fellows.

Honorary fellows

The following persons are or have been honorary fellows of the society:

Society publications

Journals

The BPS publishes 12 journals:

British Journal of Clinical Psychology

British Journal of Developmental Psychology

British Journal of Educational Psychology

British Journal of Health Psychology

British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology

British Journal of Psychology

British Journal of Social Psychology

Journal of Neuropsychology

Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology

Legal and Criminological Psychology

Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice

Environmental Psychology Research

The Psychologist

The Psychologist is the monthly magazine of the British Psychological #society. It provides a forum for communication and discussion among all members of the society and beyond, and helps promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge of psychology, pure and applied.

The Psychologist is read by more than 40,000 members in print, and the website – which runs a significant amount of online-only content – reaches millions of users each year.

The Psychologist is also available in app form, with extras such as author-narrated audio for BPS members. On social media, the focus is a Bluesky presence.

The Psychologist was launched in 1988, incorporating the existing Bulletin of the British Psychological Society. A full archive is available.

The Psychologist (both in print and online) also incorporates the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, launched in 2003 to provide journalistic, accessible summaries of new peer-reviewed research. The Research Digest is also available to all as a weekly email, and has an associated podcast PsychCrunch.

Dr Jon Sutton took up the role of Editor of The Psychologist in March 2000, coming from a psychology lectureship at Glasgow Caledonian University. His official title now is Head of Science Communication, reflecting broader efforts to tell ‘stories of Psychology’ that have included a regular presence at Latitude Festival.

Books

The Society publishes a series of textbooks in collaboration with Wiley-Blackwell. These cover most of the core areas of psychology.

Member networks: Sections, divisions, branches and groups

The British Psychological Society currently has ten divisions and nineteen sections. Divisions and sections differ in that the former are open to practitioners in a certain field of psychology, so professional and qualified psychologists only will be entitled to full membership of a division, whereas the latter are interest groups comprising members of the BPS who are interested in a particular academic aspect of psychology.

Divisions

The divisions include:

Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology

Division of Clinical Psychology

Division of Coaching Psychology

Division of Counselling Psychology

Division of Educational and Child Psychology

Division of Forensic Psychology

Division of Health Psychology

Division of Neuropsychology

Division of Occupational Psychology

Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology

Scottish Division of Educational Psychology

The Division of Clinical Psychology is the largest division within the BPS – it is subdivided into thirteen faculties:

Addiction Archived 4 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine

Children, Young People and their Families Archived 4 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine

Clinical Health Psychology Archived 4 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine

Eating Disorders Archived 4 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine

Forensic Clinical Psychology Archived 4 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine

Sections

The Sections Archived 4 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine currently include:

Note: The term 'division' in the American Psychological Association does not have the same meaning as it does in the British Psychological Society, coming closer to what the British Psychological Society refers to as 'sections'. Branches are for members in the same geographical region.

Special groups

BPS currently has the following special groups to provide a forum for members working in particular specialist fields, with a particular focus on training, practice, and professional development

Regional Branches

The Society also organises regional branches throughout the United Kingdom. These include the following branches:

East Midlands Branch

East of England Branch

London and Home Counties Branch

North East of England Branch

North West of England Branch

Northern Ireland Branch

Scottish Branch

South West of England Branch

Welsh Branch

Wessex Branch

West Midlands Branch

Statutory regulation

BPS has been concerned with the question of statutory registration of psychologists since the 1930s. It received its charter in 1965 and an amendment in 1987 which allowed it to maintain a register of psychologists. The UK government announced its intention to widen statutory regulation, to include inter alia psychologists, following a number of scandals arising in the 1990s in the psychotherapy field. The BPS was in favour of statutory regulation, but opposed the proposed regulator, the Health Professions Council (HPC), preferring the idea of a new Psychological Professions Council which would map quite closely onto its own responsibilities. The government resisted this, however, and in June 2009, under the Health Care and Associated Professions (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order, regulation of most of the psychology professions passed to the HCPC, the renamed Health and Care Professions Council.

Society offices

The Society's main office is currently in Leicester in the United Kingdom. According to BPS HR department, as of April 2019 there were 113 staff members at the Leicester office, 9 in London. There are also smaller regional offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow. The archives are deposited at the Wellcome Library in the Euston Road, London.

Logo and YouTube

The British Psychological Society's logo is an image of the Greek mythical figure Psyche, personification of the soul, holding an oil lamp. The use of her image is a reference to the origins of the word psychology. The lamp symbolises learning and is also a reference to the story of Psyche. Eros was in love with Psyche and would visit her at night, but had forbidden her from finding out his identity. She was persuaded by her jealous sisters to discover his identity by holding a lamp to his face as he slept. Psyche accidentally burnt him with oil from the lamp, and he awoke and flew away.

The Society has its own YouTube channel.