From its earliest examples in the nineteenth century onwards, the Turkish novel has always been concerned with social issues. As is generally known, the very emergence of the novel genre itself is interwoven with questions of modernisation practices and the “correct” way to become modern. Among the gamut of crises that the pursuit of modernity instigated, the problematic and unsettling individuation process is a key component of the narratives of Turkish modernisation. As Sibel Irz?k argues in “Allegorical Lives,” Turkish novelistic imagination has often been preoccupied with the lack of separation between public and personal selves. She provides a general psychoanalytical reading of novels such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanp?nar’s Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü (1954, The Time Regulation Institute, 2014), O?uz Atay’s Tutunamayanlar (1970-71, The Disconnected), and Adalet A?ao?lu’s Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die, 1973). Many other novels portraying such entanglements of the public and personal selves can be similarly read from a psychoanalytical perspective. However, my intention is not to pursue such a line of inquiry. Instead I will focus on psychoanalysis itself as a contact point for the paralleling narratives of the encounters between societal modernisation and the traditional perceptions of selfhood. In some of the novels of the mid-twentieth century, certain concerns with the “self” in turmoil become manifest in portrayals of psychoanalysis as a subject of investigation and critique, particularly in regards to the tensions between the collective and the individual, the spiritual and the psychological senses of selfhood. I will examine works by Ahmet Hamdi Tanp?nar and Peyami Safa as representatives of a literary moment that epitomises the epistemological parley around the self-in-crisis along the lines of tradition vs. modernity. These two writers share similar critical perspectives on the problem of the modernising self. Yet, they follow differing paths that reveal a complex picture. The irony in Tanp?nar’s and the angst in Safa’s works, both equally invested and critical, convey how psychoanalysis becomes a significant topic of intellectual engagement. Their perspectives and stylistic choices on similar themes through psychoanalysis provide a valuable outlook on the intricate encounters between tradition and modernity. I will, thus, examine psychoanalysis as a key ideational contact zone in literary discussions of modernity and the self-in-crisis and discuss why psychoanalysis emerges as a potent counterpart of the discourses in “modernity vs. tradition.”