Conviction and interpretation: hiding and seeking with words

A patient who was developing her career as a writer evolved a unique process of reading her fiction aloud during analytic sessions. This paper explores this unconventional approach and the inevitable illusions, fantasies, meaningful explanations, and creative fictions that form a part of every technical/theoretical choice. How do analysts reach an integrated, rather than a theory-led, sense of conviction about a theoretical/technical choice? The development of integrated conviction is illustrated by showing the accumulation of ordinary, everyday emotional responses that are gradually integrated with theory, over time, until the analyst achieves an inner feeling of fit.