An extensive case report on the modern psychoanalytic treatment of a psychotic patient. The author presents the history of the patient’s emotional life as it emerged through the transference-countertransference dynamic, which developed (“matured”) during this long treatment. Telling this patient’s treatment history in this way, almost as a detailed memoir of the rise and development of the analyst’s own countertransference states, proves to be a particularly illuminating way of making the patient’s essential self present and alive in the reader’s awareness. This account is supported by extensive reference to clinical writings on narcissism and the narcissistic defenses.