The author revisits her experience of supervision with Esther Bick, which took place over 30 years ago. The patient discussed was a seven-year-old boy whose disturbance dated from the very beginning of his life. His difficulties had severe implications for the development of his capacity to feel emotionally contained and for the development of a capacity to think. The supervision and the therapy with this child remain alive in the therapist's mind, in part because of Esther Bick's unique and original understanding of the patient's distress and disturbance and its relation to the concrete experience of primitive anxiety, fear of annihilation and death. Esther Bick's teaching has become the backbone of the therapist's clinical understanding.