Upon entry into therapy a thirteen-year-old girl substituted a quasi-religious experience for essential fantasies which had been encroaching severely on reality. The religious experience was a device for maintaining distance from the therapist, warding off direct transference manifestations, and maintaining her fantasies while they were necessary. The therapist was able to talk in terms of the experience and not to intrude directly before the patient was ready for it. Over a two-year period the patient was gradually able to renounce this device as the threat of ego regression receded.