This article offers a series of vignettes from a treatment of an 11-year-old boy who was adopted at birth. At the beginning of the three-year treatment, the boy, then eight years old, was overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety and anger and given to tantrums and breaking things. The reader is brought into the consulting room to observe the development of symbolic play and to watch the therapeutic relationship slowly develop. Detailed descriptions of the interactions between patient and therapist serve to illustrate the emergence of adoption-related themes in the play, gradually leading to interpretations that help the patient discover important connections between current difficulties and conflicts rooted in his experience of adoption. By the end of treatment, this sad little boy is a precocious chess player who can be competitive with his therapist as well as ask for what he needs and find solutions to his problems.