This paper presents the case of a girl named Perry. During the four years of treatment, her level of functioning transformed from that of a preverbal child—a crazed, violent, exhausting time for her mother and for me when we never knew from day to day if she would need hospitalization—to that of a person who uses talk as a means for discharging and integrating feelings. The clarity and directness of what she had to say as she finally gave up her primitive, dramatic enactments are a revelation. Since my work with Perry and her mother, who was my original patient, has been so interconnected, the story of the one cannot be told without telling something about the story of the other.