Writing as an analysand I argue that without psychoanalytic support psychotic signification may retain the incomprehensibility of a private language destined never to be understood. Using Lacan's (over-quoted) belief that ‘the unconscious is structured like a language’, I show how his concept of ‘master signifiers’, when applied to the/my unconscious, read by metaphor and metonymy, is particularly helpful in understanding the apparently unintelligible ‘language’ of psychosis. Drawing on my own psychotic material, with reference to a specific ‘master signifier’ in one of my psychotic episodes, I also begin to explore the challenges that the solipsism of psychotic signification presents in the therapeutic relationship.