The psychic impact of emigration and assimilation is discussed, viewed through the lens of a case vignette. The patient and the analyst were both immigrants to America and our work together illuminated the powerful influence of emigration and loss of the mother country. Issues concerning dissociation of the mother-country self, along with subtle but intense feelings of being an outsider, reverberated in us throughout the treatment. I discovered that I defined myself as an “outsider” and had unconsciously divided my patients into “insiders” and “outsiders.” Cultural categories such as nationality, class, and religion are often utilized by analyst and patient alike to define “insiders” and “outsiders.” The paper examines the impact that these definitions can have on analytic praxis.