After becoming the therapist of a hospital clinic patient who had never previously paid her clinic bill, Dr. Hilles chose to proceed with therapy while interpretively dealing with the nonpayment as a resistance. The unpaid bill and its meaning became a major focus of treatment. Nonpayment represented to the patient, a woman of borderline character structure, a means of avoiding fusion (the therapist might eventually terminate treatment in anger, or the patient leave out of guilt), as well as binding the therapist (the patient's value to the clinic would rise in proportion to her debt). Over the course of two years the patient became more successful in managing significant areas of her life, including her extratherapeutic financial dealings, though the clinic debt was never made good. Treatment was judged a 'qualified success'.