Generational dialogue refers to both shifts in relatedness between generations as well as how the otherness of predecessors and successors are negotiated internally. At various points in the life cycle, the need for generational dialogue is rekindled. As a new place within the generational cycle is inhabited, the individual contends with a novel version of the self and the influences that other generations, both older and younger, exert. Since each new generation's place needs to be claimed and not simply conferred, clashes within and between subjectivities are inevitable. Doubts about the self give rise to a “sorting out” process of which generational dialogue is a part. Clinical examples illustrate the unconscious search for generational dialogue and how it might be engendered or thwarted in analytic work.