Discusses the place of narrative in the psychoanalytic process. Psychoanalytic history and development are reviewed, and it is noted that Freud viewed psychoanalytic life history as something to be equated less with narrative and more with science. The relationship between the concept of narrativism and historical truth is discussed, focusing on 2 disparate positions—objectivism and relativism—and on the writings of D. Spence and R. Schafer. The return to the lost dialectic is discussed, and it is concluded that without some extra-analytic foundation on which to undertake the task of narration, there could be no genuinely historical knowledge; the transition from the present of the analytic setting to the past of the analysand's life cannot be made without the data being constituted in such a way as to render them historical. (34 ref)