This paper uses the concept of “the gift” to bring together many diverse strands and practices that are rooted in a common heritage, but whose missing links are now disassociated in the amnesia of time. Here, the gift is used as a pivotal concept (or a MacGuffin, see below) around which to explore its place in relation to gender, commodity exchange, interpretation, the secret, and revelation, and how these express themselves and converge in modern psychotherapeutic practice. By situating the gift within a system of wider cultural meanings, the paper offers a less pathological view of gift giving (and, therefore, of its bearers) that might ordinarily be found in the psychotherapeutic literature. Furthermore, it is argued that this relocation not only challenges a view of the unconscious as hidden, but offers an alternative view of meaning as narrative construction rather than immanent revelation.