The centre was founded in 1985 by Bice Benvenuto, Professor Bernard Burgoyne,[3] Richard Klein and Darian Leader.

It was established as a charity with the purpose of advancing education for the benefit of the public in particular by the provision of training and seminars in psychoanalysis.

[4] In association with Karnac Books CFAR has published The Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research Library[5] which aims to make classic Lacanian texts available in English for the first time, as well as publishing original research in the Lacanian field: In February 2007, the UK Government published a white paper (‘Trust, Assurance and Safety – The Regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st Century’ [10]) which stated that "The government is planning to introduce statutory regulation for…psychotherapists and counsellors…" [11] and that "…psychotherapists and counsellors will be regulated by the Health Professions Council, following that Council’s rigorous process of assessing their regulatory needs and ensuring that its system is capable of accommodating them".

[17] Following on from this report, CFAR was one of six organisations that called for a judicial review[18] of whether or not the HPC had, in fact, fully assessed the regulatory needs of the professions or properly determined if it was the most appropriate body to provide such regulation.

On 16 February 2011 the UK government — in its command paper ‘Enabling Excellence’ [25] — halted the project to regulate counselling, psychotherapy and other talking treatments via the HPC.