The author addresses some issues regarding patients who relocate and who struggle with adaptation to a new reality. She argues that emigration is a complex psychological phenomenon that requires a therapist to pay special attention to the issue of language, difference and identity, and suggests that the issues of different culture and language in analytic psychotherapy need to be considered as part of a wider cultural context to which we all belong, rather than a specialized area of interest. The paper illustrates, through the clinical example of an East European male patient, that the psychic work of emigration can be understood as a process of integrating splits between pre- and post-migration selves. The author concludes that the analyst needs to let herself be involved as a ‘real person’ to reach the non-interpretative aspects of the patient's psyche through a mutuality of shared experience to promote a change.