What are the essential properties of a person? Most psychoanalysts would claim that among the essential properties there are psychological properties. However, Olson has persuasively argued that this cannot be the case unless one is prepared to accept paradoxical consequences. In this paper I shall argue that the essentially psychological nature of the person can be salvaged with the recognition of a supervenient entity, called the supervenient person, that comes into existence in the course of the development of the human infant. I link this process with Mahler’s account of the psychological birth of the human infant, and contrast the notion of the supervenient person with Das Ich of classical psychoanalysis. One beneficial consequence of recognising this entity is the more sophisticated analysis and understanding, both theoretically and clinically, that it affords to certain conflictual psychological states that are encountered in psychiatric and psychoanalytic clinical contexts.