The satisfactorily terminated analysis of an unmarried mother supports previous conclusions from diagnostic studies as to the dynamics involved but adds further factors that indicate greater complexity of dynamics than previously realized. The need for illegitimate pregnancy was a reaction to death of the father in her latency period. This event precipitated a regression in which a trauma from the second year of life was re-enacted which had involved temporary loss of her mother due to illness. The pregnancy was an attempt to replace the object loss of the father (and of the mother from an earlier period), and identification with a sister who had an illegitimate pregnancy, and represented a self-punishment for unconscious rage. The avoidance of marriage was a pseudo-independence based on fear of object loss and on a masochistic conception of marriage derived from her mother's experience. The need to place the child for adoption was an attempt to master the trauma of passive object loss by actively giving up the object.