Through clinical material ambivalence is explored as a defence by keeping differences apart or denying their existence, and as positive in the bringing together of differences. The therapist's own seductive feelings in the countertransference and aspects of the process are seen as important indicators of a primary relationship where the parental narcissism has caused the patient to become ‘stuck’ in ambivalence in order to fulfil the parental need for ‘sameness'. The child/patient, however, also resists ‘sameness’ with controlling ambivalent behaviour and by being in control of nothing happening. For the convenience of style the therapist in this paper is referred to in the masculine and the patient in the feminine.