This paper is an attempt to understand the origin of the analyst's conviction about both the patient's analyzability and the psychoanalytic endeavor. Clinical material will be used to illustrate the way that the intensity of the analyst's conviction is or isn't noticed or interpreted, by both patient and analyst. The primary hypothesis to be proposed is that the analyst's awareness of the transmission of conviction during conversion (or evaluation) can trigger recognition and use of a critical period for identification with an underlying mutual fantasy of intergenerational, analyst-patient conviction about analysis.