Traditional postgraduate psychotherapeutic programmes tend to maintain an individual/social dualism and the illusion that our social embeddedness does not contribute to the hopelessness, anger, desperation, and distress we experience daily. To begin to contemplate identity as a complex interplay of internal and external factors, autoethnography is put forward as a method of tracing the dynamic impact of taken-for-granted socio-political norms and values on identity formation. As a critical pedagogical tool, autoethnography presents students with an opportunity to gain personal understanding of sociocultural issues, unconscious processes, defenses, affective experience, and the complexity of identity, highlighting the need for culturally situated psychotherapeutic practice. The work of four students is offered to illustrate the practical integration of autoethnography into higher education.