A comprehensive review is offered of literature that contributes to our understanding of a psychoanalyst's boredom. Some salient aspects of this phenomenon, the author finds, are mutual avoidance of both aggressive and erotic fellings, projective identification and counter-identification, and blockage of affect in the patient. A detailed presentation is given of a case in which the psychiatrist found himself becoming bored during the psychotherapy of a young male patient. The psychiatrist's initial response was guilt and shame, because he believed that this phenomenon was evidence of his own professional incompetence. It later became clear that the patient needed to keep the therapist at an optimal emotional distance, which moderated his dual fears of abandonment and engulfment, just as he had had to do with his mother. Boring the psychiatrist was a method of achieving this adaptive aim in the context of the psychotherapy. It was also employed to protect