I have attempted to show how guilt appears at the very beginning of the analysis of two young children. Their methods of trying to avoid it produce persecutory anxieties and trap them in altered external relationships. Alberto, who has some psychotic trends in his personality, is confronted by quasi-hallucinatory terrors or becomes mindless, submitting himself to threatening damaged objects in a stereotyped and sometimes excited way. Ann is dragged down into suicidal depression or becomes delinquently cold and cynical. When Ann is able, through projective identification, to communicate her unbearable guilt feelings, pushing them into the analyst, deeper understanding can be achieved.