Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy: How much do we know about those professions French lawmakers are focusing on? Pierre-Henri Castel. Are we living today in a full-fledged disciplinary type of society and under a control-freak type of government? Some of the outcry over the French government's bill on psychotherapeutic professions suggests as much. But as one promptly finds out, the controversy has not much of an axe to grind, as very little is known about the main trends in the country's mental health and the respective roles of various types of therapists over the past 25 years. No wonder then that there should be so much mutual misunderstanding. The author takes for his starting point the status report that is so urgently required.