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As Freud noted quite early in his career, an inevitable concomitant of every analysis is the paternal role that is thrust upon the analyst by the very nature of the analytic contract. Although a patient may enter analysis in the hope of finding the longed for mother of infancy, he or she becomes aware, sometimes from the first interview, that this is not to be the case. Le Guen suggests that it is precisely out of this dissonance that regression, frustration, aggression, depression, and eventually interpretation and the transference develop. The transference neurosis is brought into existence by this paternal stance of the analyst. The paternal role both constitutes the analytic process and imposes limits on what is observable and analyzable. Hence the necessary role of the analyst presents a sort of uncertainty principle for psychoanalysis. The conditions that permit the analytic process to develop at the same time limit what can be determined via the process. Le Guen offers some reflections on this paternal role as observed in the countertransference and in the analyst's own filiation to the short genealogical table that began with Freud.