Feedback or echo between the child and his mother is a necessary mechanism for the development of the ego and the self. The child stimulates his mother by his behavior and she, out of her self, responds so that he gets to know what he is like in terms of her experience. A lack of this feedback can result in a feeling of living in a void and being empty of oneself. The successful six-year analysis of a seventeen-year-old girl 'empty of herself' because of insufficiency of response from the mother is described in detail.