Self-employed psychologist: registering your business address, a profession with no professional body

Setting up a practice, moving to new premises or simply protecting your home address: a self-employed psychologist faces the same questions as any other independent professional, with one distinctive feature. The profession has no professional body. Where a doctor or a nurse declares their place of practice to a regulatory council, the psychologist follows a different route. Here is what this changes when it comes to choosing your address.

A protected title, but no professional body

The title of psychologist is protected. Using it requires a recognised qualification, and practice comes with professional obligations, including confidentiality. Even so, the profession does not fall under any professional body. There is no regulatory council and no register to join, and therefore no declaration of a place of practice to a professional body, unlike doctors or nurses.

This absence of a professional body has a direct practical consequence. Choosing and changing your address does not depend on a professional authority that would vet where you set up. Your contacts when you start out lie elsewhere: the health administration, the business register and your pension fund.

Who to declare your address to

Three channels run in parallel, each with its own purpose. It is worth telling them apart, because only one of them actually concerns your business address.

Registration as a healthcare professional is carried out with the regional health agency (ARS). Since 3 June 2024, psychologists have been leaving the ADELI directory to join the shared directory of healthcare professionals (RPPS). This is a professional registration, separate from the registration of your business.

Your business address, on the other hand, is declared at the one-stop shop run by the INPI. This is where your business address is set in the administrative sense: the address that will appear on your official documents and in the business registers.

Finally, the pension of a self-employed psychologist falls under the CIPAV. Your affiliation follows your activity, not the address chosen for your registered office.

Keep the overall logic in mind. Where relevant, the business address service replaces your company's address at the one-stop shop. It does not replace your RPPS registration with the ARS, nor your affiliation to the CIPAV. These are three independent layers, which do not involve the same contact and do not follow the same rules.

Sole trader or company: which address for the registered office

As a sole trader, you declare a business address at the INPI one-stop shop. Registration under the micro-enterprise scheme is free of charge there. This address can be your home, your practice or a registered business address. If you operate under the micro scheme, the arrangements specific to it are set out on our page about the business address of a sole trader.

In a company, for example a SELARL or a SASU, the registered office is governed by company law. The address appears in the articles of association or, depending on how they are drafted, is limited to the municipality, and its transfer follows the formalities specific to the form you have chosen.

In both cases, using a registered business address means you do not have to expose your home address. For a psychologist who sees patients at home or who is starting out without dedicated premises, this is often the main reason: to separate the published address from where you live.

The day you change address, the mechanics stay the same. As a sole trader, you update the address declared at the one-stop shop. In a company, you follow the procedure for transferring the registered office set out in your articles of association. Where the declared address is that of a business address service, moving home does not, on its own, trigger any change in the registers, since it is the provider's address that appears there.

Professional secrecy and patient correspondence

The psychologist is bound by professional secrecy. Post that concerns your patients should not be opened by an unauthorised third party. This requirement deserves to be settled before you choose where your correspondence is sent.

A simple rule reconciles confidentiality with a registered business address: keep that address for administrative flows, such as URSSAF, the tax authorities and the bank, and have correspondence about your patients sent directly to your practice. The business address then handles the public address and exchanges with the authorities, without ever coming between you and the people you support.

In practical terms, two channels coexist. The authorities and your financial partners write to the business address, which centralises official post. Your patients and any bodies dealing with individual situations write to your consulting rooms. This separation protects confidentiality while leaving you a stable address for your formalities, including when your premises change.

What a business address does not change

Choosing a registered business address is a decision about an address, nothing more. It changes neither your affiliation to the CIPAV, nor your tax regime, nor your reporting obligations. You remain registered with the ARS on the same terms, and your practice remains subject to the same professional rules.

In other words, a business address answers a question of location and confidentiality, not one of status. For an overview that goes beyond the psychologist's case alone, you can read our page on business addresses for healthcare professionals.

For the psychologist, having no professional body simplifies one thing and shifts another. No regulatory council approves your address, but you have to think in parallel about registration with the ARS, the business address at the one-stop shop and the handling of patient post. Once these three layers are told apart, choosing a business address becomes a clear decision.

Sources as at 20 September 2026: use of the title of psychologist; registration with the ARS and the RPPS directory; CIPAV. Domisiège, business address provider in Tours, backed by the firm Épiphyse Conseil. This article gives general guidance and does not replace a review of your own situation.