This paper deals with the problem of why the recovery of the memory of an incident upon which symptoms have been founded is not always followed by clinical improvement. After twenty-one months of analysis, characterized chiefly by a strong dependence and a negative transference (the object of the projection of all wrongs), a woman patient recalled for the first time her emotional reaction to the sight of a newly born brother at her mother's breast. It was a highly destructive fantasy of an oral nature, directed toward the mother's 'insides'. The recollection occurred after the patient became aware