An analysis of the interaction between self and other in the one-to-one writing conference, informed by theories of Louis Althusser, Jurgen Habermas, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others, can help tutors view one-to-one conferences as a dynamic meaning-making process occurring within an integral social context. Bakhtin/Medvedev's discussion of discourse production as a phenomenon determined simultaneously from within and without can help tutors see the numerous interacting forces of the conference process, including ideology, economics, institutionalized meanings, and student and tutor desires. With Althusser, tutors' understanding of ideology's relation to subjectivity and practice lets them recognize that tutors and writers are both "always already" in process within ideological horizons that may not coincide and that need to develop through a dialogic process. With this knowledge tutors can become aware that an institutionalized educational ideology sanctions certain discursive forms--forms that reinforce the conditions of production supporting it--while excluding others, thus leading tutors to appropriate students' texts to make them resemble sanctioned texts, and leading students to relinquish their texts. J. Habermas's critical hermeneutics offers a way of understanding both the organized forces affecting our use of language and the ideologies influencing our interpretive practices. By seeing the student as an equal partner in the composing process, tutors can recognize, problematize and pierce the dissonance arising from the conflicting interaction of the ideologies and interests of tutor and student. (JG)