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Interorganisational and intersectoral collaboration or partnership working is an increasingly prevalent social and organisational structure. There is a continuing push towards network governance of which partnership working is an expression. Psychoanalysis can contribute to an examination of some of the unconscious dynamics that this way of working generates. In this paper I draw on a study carried out on a partnership involving a range of public organisations and NGOs set up to deal with the accommodation and health needs of travellers. Travellers are identified as an Irish, indigenous, ethnic group, who have traditionally led a nomadic lifestyle. This partnership had been operating for about three years. A striking feature was that it was viewed by most people from the statutory agencies as having made important progress despite the fact that conditions for travellers on the ground remained virtually unchanged. This raises an important question concerning what function this partnership served for the organisations involved and the system as a whole. I draw on Menzies Lyth's seminal work on the defences used by nurses in training in a London hospital in the 1950s, as well as Jessop's ideas about why all forms of governance, including partnerships, fail, at least partially.