This paper presents a re-reading of the Foucauldian analysis of professional accounting firms given by Grey in his `Career as a Project of the Self...' ( Sociology, 28,2). It argues that Grey's paper provides an exemplar of the `desocialising' tendencies observed in some Foucauldian analysis and attempts to illustrate this desocialisation through placing Grey's data in an Eliasian rather than a Foucauldian framework.