Defective colour vision affects one out of twelve male analysands and analysts, but its psychological consequences have been disregarded because of the transference secrecy of the defectives and the countertransference scotoma of analysts. Adding to the account of three colour defectives described in an earlier paper, several episodes from a fourth and one from a fifth are reported. Some relevant history is noted, including the discovery of the condition and the later invention of the misleading term 'colour blindness'. Two instances are given of its use by normally-visioned analysands to describe what they felt to be an 'impossible' relation to me. The defective inevitably experiences during his early years a specific and continuing series of occasions for disillusion, in Winnicott's sense of the term, which tends to affect the capacity for intimacy.