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This paper accounts for the power of the resurrection myth in terms of Winnicott's theories of early development, particularly 'the development of the capacity for concern' and the idea of 'object-use' that grew out of it. The myth of the resurrection allows those who participate in it to re-enact basic developmental processes, beginning with the infant's relation to its mother and extending to transference relationships of other sorts, which can lead to the capacity to 'use' objects. For the believer, Jesus represents the object of destructive attacks who has, somehow, miraculously survived those attacks and has in the process become the symbol of 'object-constancy'. He can be 'used … can feed back other-than-me substance into' those who have attained the capacity to 'use' him. The myth enables its believers to acknowledge their destructiveness (what Christianity calls 'sin') while at the same time enabling them to live life more fully in 'a world of objects … a world of shared reality'. The sacrament of the eucharist is seen as partly re-enacting this process. It is hoped that this account is less reductive than psychoanalytic accounts of religious phenomena usually are.