The author highlights self-observation as an important goal of psychoanalysis, separate from other concepts with which it is often confounded. To support this position, he presents clinical and developmental data, as well as observations by psychoanalysts on recent findings by cognitive neuroscientists. He introduces the term ‘pathological attractor sites’ to capture the challenge in moving from the belief in the reality of one's own thoughts to self-observation. Clinical techniques to deal with this specific challenge are presented.