The paper discusses the process by which the words we as psychoanalysts hear from our patients lead us to say what we do to them. Two examples of 'ordinary' everyday analytical intervention are given and the question of how the patient communicated to the analyst is then raised in the context of some ideas from the scientific study of communication. It is suggested that whether or not these ideas are useful there is a need to develop more formal ways of describing all the communicative signs in analytic sessions and so consider how what happened came to take place (not just whether what took place was 'good' or 'bad').