Thorner reports the analysis of a middle-aged spinster. Changes in the patient's relationship to the 'good object' indicated progress. At the start, she regarded the analysis as a delousing process, had persecutory anxieties connected with her fear of being full of bad things, could not accept or use good or whole things, and was fond of using broken or makeshift things instead. She felt she had to give up good things to others who needed them, and imagined that the analysis would end when she had nothing left to say and was thus totally exhausted and depleted. In the early stages, the patient could not introject a good object, since this would have meant its destruction. Progress was shown when her anxieties over her own dangerousness became diminished and it became possible for her to introject the good object represented by the analyst without fear of destroying him.