This paper describes some work from an ongoing group in which nurse tutors discuss, with each other and with a visiting psychoanalyst, their work with difficult personal students. The aim of the group is to help the tutors disentangle unconscious factors in the tutor-student relationship which are impeding the tasks of teaching and learning. The author attempts to show the way in which the group grappled with, and conceptualised, complex clinical and theoretical concepts using its own idiom rather than established terminology. She also expresses the view that there is a readiness for such work amongst nurses, but that psychoanalytically-oriented practitioners need to take some initiative in offering to work with nurses and in demonstrating that what they have to contribute can be helpful.