The paper centers on the analytic treatment of a doctoral student, conducted in Munich, in the patient's and the analyst's common mother tongue. Far away from her family and her native town, the patient could not feel as free and vital as before; through our analytic work, she could also resume the developmental stages she had missed and eventually move towards the condition of an emotionally responsive, sexually active and autonomous young woman. In other words, such an analytic work - conducted abroad in the patient's mother language - was essential in allowing the patient to separate from her family and see herself with her own eyes. Revisiting her “old Italian self” together with the analyst and constructing a “new German self” with the help of her analyst allowed her to become a (healthier) “citizen of the world”.