ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the role being played by contemporary codes of ethics and practice needs to be considered within the framework of the shift from a discourse of responsibility to one of accountability. It argues that the most effective way of doing this is to examine the relation between the why and the how of regulation in an attempt to make visible the logic at stake in the current move towards regulation. The perceived failure of the system of self-regulation by professional organizations, their failure to safeguard their position of responsibility and medical authority, coincides with a breakdown in the relation of trust between patient and doctor with a loss of confidence in the profession as a whole. The chapter describes a symptomatic and diagnostic reading of the discourse of regulation that will provide the basis for effective opposition to that discourse by elaborating a psychoanalytic critique of the logic at stake.
