In this contribution I describe Isabel's approach to editing her papers for publication. I consider the ‘unanxiety’ that allowed for a constructive relationship to her work on her papers, and coexisted with her well-known dislike of writing. I go on to consider possible reasons for the dislike, including Isabel's longstanding preoccupation with the issue of how to translate the language of psychoanalysis into terms that could be meaningful to the organizations she was working with. I suggest that Isabel felt that the face-to-face encounter was needed to achieve this, and illustrate this with an example from a piece of consultancy at the Cassel Hospital that she undertook, which I observed. It is hoped that work on her literary archive, just beginning, will shed further light on these issues.