A mother and her thirteen-year-old son had been living in a symbiotic union, the boy acting out the mother's problems for her. The course of the doctor's relationship with the boy was remarkably like that of his relationship with the boy's mother even though there was no direct communication between them during that time. Siegel believes that his findings are in agreement with those of Johnson and Szurek: parents find vicarious gratification through the child's acting out. In this case both mother and child re-created in the hospital the kinds of relationships which had characterized an earlier epoch in their lives.