Despite its many vicissitudes since the early 1980s, the project to regulate the talking therapies now looks set to happen in 2010/11. The Department of Health has commissioned both UKCP and BACP to carry out survey work, much of which is now available. The regulator is assumed to be the Health Professions Council, although there have been several questions raised about its appropriateness. The UKCP, for example, is sceptical of HPC as a regulator in its present form. Although a major issue involves the compatibility of therapy and counselling, does psychoanalysis have a place here? Does analysis share enough of its aims, training outcomes and practices to sit alongside therapy and counselling?