The author underscores the importance of Slochower's and Grand's papers on the misdemeanors and crimes committed by psychoanalysts during their clinical work. Both authors are described as being courageous in exploring the realm of analysts' secrets, small misdemeanors, and crimes as a valuable source of collecting and processing countertransference material. Instead of looking at every self-involved activity as a theft from the patient, the author suggests that an analyst may have to retreat to self-enclosed activities in order to be fully present for the patient. At the same time, the kind of activity in which an analyst is engaged while listening to a patient may encapsulate and foreshadow crucial aspects of the transference- countertransference dynamic.