Psychoanalytic writing may be vieved as a particular version of creative process. As such, it evokes many of the self and object-related anxieties and conflicts associated rith creative expression. This paper considers the role of illusion in facilitating an entry into the psychoanalytic vriting process in the light of contemporary relational and feminist perspectives. It is suggested that the writer who struggles to vrite may engage certain real or internalised object experiences to retreat to a transitional idealised self-state and to enter the writing process. Tvo variants of this subjective state are described, based on Winnicott's notion of'being" and'doing" as underlying dimensions of human experience. Each self-state excludes a particular set of self-and object-related anxieties and creates a temporary illusion of creative certainty. That illusion helps the rriter temporarily to avoid self-doubt and anxiety in order to enter the creative arena Ultimately, however, the protected writing space must expand if the writer is to address and integrate the world of psychoanalytic ideas within the writer's own creative process. This process is illustrated by a description of the evolution of my own experience as a psychoanalytic writer.

The process of psychoanalytic writing represents a particular version of creative expres-sion in which the writer's ideas are articulated within an envelope of thought defined by the current cultural and psychoanalytic context. To construct or modify theory, to offer a new way of viewing clinical material, to integrate or criticise the work of others, all require that the psychoanalytic writer take account of and respond to the work of other psychoanalysts, while also making an original contribution. Like all varieties of creative experience, the act of psychoanalytic writing entails a leap of faith. This leap of faith will take different shapes as a function of many individual and external factors, but inevitably involves subjective (if not objective) risk. Although for some, the very uncertainty and risky quality