(Final version accepted 20 January 2009)

The central argument is that analysts/therapists and translators/interpreters have a great deal more in common than is commonly supposed. The key element in this sharing is their essential aloneness in the moment and act of interpreting, and their intellectual and affective response to that aloneness. What marks this off as both important and exceptional is its contrast with the untroubling world of study and the comforting world of professional membership and practice. The professional worlds are abundantly documented; the individual experience has had nothing like so much attention. The focus of the argument is on how significant meanings are established, in a context in which no meanings can be taken for granted. The purpose of the argument is to show that each kind of practitioner may have much to learn from the other.