The author offers miscellaneous reflections and memoiristic vignettes detailing his experiences with, and in, psychoanalysis and paints a troubling portrait of characteristic practices and assumptions. He also looks at the relationship between literature and psychoanalysis and asks about their relative success in helping us to understand ideas and behaviors central to our sense of being human. Finally, he examines the relevant issues from the perspective of a fiction writer tempted by all-too-convenient notions associated with the psychoanalytic tradition and formulates a cautionary procedure for resisting those notions.