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Becoming a therapist is a complex process, much more so if the therapist is a foreigner who practises abroad and not in his/her mother-tongue. In this paper I try to analyse some aspects of that process drawing on my personal experience as a trainee-analysand and as a psychotherapist. Clinical examples are given of the anxieties, defences and the creative uses of being a bilingual clinician. A parallel is drawn between some of the dynamics within the patient/therapist couple and Thomas Mann's analysis of foreignness in The Magic Mountain.