Analytic tradition has generally held that the genders of therapist and patient make little difference to transference phenomena. This paper considers a woman's search for a female therapist as an enactment of unconscious hopes, conflicts and anxieties that will gradually become externalised in the here-and-now of the transference relationship. Using clinical material where the starting point of therapy was an expressed need for a female therapist, the paper explores how the gender of the female therapist was used by female patients as raw material for unconscious phantasy concerning their relation to the world, to others and ultimately to themselves.