Lacan's dismanteling of his clinic

Identified by Michel Foucault as the “psy-function”, the significance of the psychologizing discourse in the Western society has now become such that it seems almost natural that the power, whatever its form, should address itself to the supposed holders of this discourse, whenever a so-called “social” question presents itself. We argue that the psychoanalyst cannot do otherwise but to abstain himself from being put in this position. Futhermore, the need for this abstention is inherent to the psychoanalytic practice, where it is rooted in the active refusal, when receiving a patient, to use any kind of nosographic classification, in other words to catalogize.